


Shadowstream

by dynamicsymmetry



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Angst, Conspiracies, Cybernetics, F/M, Human Experimentation, On Hiatus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-03 00:16:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 35,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8689171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dynamicsymmetry/pseuds/dynamicsymmetry
Summary: CAS academy training never covered how to handle a fugitive with a price on his head and black market implants like Beth Greene has never seen before, and it sure as hell never covered how to handle everything that comes after. But she shouldn’t be surprised. This is 2042. Nothing is simple anymore.





	1. underneath my skin there is a violence

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah, I'm finally doing this. 
> 
> I'm going to be trying to do what I've done before and alternate with Howl so that neither lies dormant for too long. Which I think is cool, because as I conceive of it right now, this story actually has a number of things in common with Howl. I didn't plan that; I think it's just because I'm writing the damn things.
> 
> A couple of notes on inspiration: this basically happened because I spent a couple of weeks immersed in _Deus Ex: Human Revolution_ and remembered how much I love cyberpunk. So I'm drawing a lot on that universe in terms of look and feel and some very basic worldbuilding elements - though really, a lot of those are pretty much standard genre tropes, and _Deus Ex_ doesn't exactly have a corner on them. 
> 
> One particular thing I have stolen wholesale is the term "augmented"; I tried to think of a word I liked better but I couldn't come up with one. That said, it's a pretty obvious/tropey word. Is that really stealing? I'm honestly unsure.
> 
>  _Blade Runner_ is another huge inspiration, as is _Ghost in the Shell._ William Gibson too - he's one of my very favorite authors - though perhaps not as much as you might think. It's been a long time since I read _Neuromancer._
> 
> A caveat: while I've done some very rudimentary research on police procedure, I'm also being characteristically handwavy and will probably fuck stuff up at least some. "It is in the future times so things are different" is the best excuse I have.
> 
> [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOEgFxZoon0) is the soundtrack for this chapter, and guided most of the pacing and imagery. 
> 
> Enjoy. ❤️

_Run._

Sherry. Sherry said. Reminding himself of what he knows, like a narrative mantra as his arms pump and his bare feet slap against the concrete. Sherry. He knows her name when he doesn't know the names of any of the others; this is because she told him during one of the times they dragged him back to his room and stuck him with needles, shut him up in the dark. She was there. Kneeling, cool fingers on his brow, sweeping his hair back from his face. She had the needle. _Sherry._

Said she was sorry. Said _whatever they tell you to do, do it. Don't fight them. It'll be easier._

_They might not hurt you as much next time._

Bullshit. Doesn't matter what he does or doesn't do. It always hurts. 

But then there was her, and the needle again. And it wasn't thick sleep with wrenching nausea on the other end. It was something else, something like lightning shivering through him, and before he knew what was happening to him he was on his feet, shoving her aside, open door and bright clean corridor beyond except it wasn't bright but was instead all swirling red light, and his heart was beating so fucking _fast_ and breath heaving and she was hissing _run, the security grid is offline, run now or you'll never make it_ and he got the gist of that. Bet your ass. 

So he ran. Is running. 

Trace the path backward from here, might help him determine where he is: corridor, elevators out of service, and a voice talking overhead, female and completely flat; heard it before but not like this. Stairwell, more red light. Something about an _emergency._ Something about a _code red_. Rapid pounding of boots in the distance; he ducked under the stairs at the bottom of the well until they passed him by. Stupid. Also slow; he's much faster. He's much stronger. 

He's much more everything. 

He suspects he could kill a few of them before they took him down. But Christ, he doesn't want to put that little theory to the test. 

More red corridor. People here, turning to watch him sprint past, gasping, calling out. That was when the first bullets whistled over his head but he didn't stop, didn't turn, and knew with a deep and irrational intuition that they weren't aiming kill shots. They don't want to kill him, oh no. He's much too valuable for that. 

They want to take him back to the cell, and hurt him some more. 

They're never going to stop. 

Turning - sharp turn, and he leaped and banked off the wall, hit the floor on all fours, threw himself upward and kept running. Door ahead, _EXIT,_ resisted him when he pushed against the handle and there were a few seconds of blind panic but then more bullets picking the door, shouts closing in, and he hurled his entire weight against it and it crashed open. He fell, scraped his palms, found his feet again, and now he's running across a walkway along a rooftop, steel bar railing to his left and featureless concrete wall to his right, yells somewhere below him and behind, swinging beams of painful light and the blare of alarms, all around him brilliant glass towers rising hundreds of feet above. No clear way out. 

No clear memory of when he wasn't _here._ And he has no fucking idea where he is. 

_Run._

Sherry said. And his thoughts can proceed along enough of a logical course to be fairly sure that Sherry will get into a lot of trouble for this. They might give Sherry a turn at being hurt, or two, or three, or a fuck of a lot more than that. He can't help her, but he can do what she told him, until he's safe and away from here or until he'll never run again. 

He reaches the end of the walkway. Calls for him to stop, rough, trying to sound authoritative but underneath he can tell they're freaked out. They're scared. That's not much comfort, and he doesn't smile, but he slams into the glass in front of him, panicked people in white coats scrambling away from it, from him, bullets cracking it like frost - he remembers frost, he saw it once, he's _certain_ he did - and he wants to smile. The urge is there. Fucking hell, can't recall when he last did. 

He pushes off the window and, guided by split-second calculation of something in the left periphery of his vision, flings himself in that direction, through a narrow gap and onto another rooftop, this one tar and slippery with rain and he splashes and skids but doesn't fall. 

Darker. Shadows along the side of the building, no close windows, giant vented metal boxes that might be ICC units. Good. They'll follow, but good. Better. 

_Run._

Alright, Sherry. Okay. 

_I'll run_. 

~ 

“Hope you're not expecting a whole lot of action, Greene.”

Beth starts slightly and glances up and over at the driver’s side of the cruiser. Grimes’s - _Rick’s,_ he said to call him Rick - face is turned dead ahead of them, appearing focused on the road, but his cool blue eyes flick in her direction, and a little smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth. For a few seconds she's worried he might call her out for not focusing - and she would be guilty as charged - but he doesn't, even though he must have noticed. When she got paired up with him earlier and looked him over, she got the distinct sense that those cool blue eyes didn't miss very much.

She also liked him immediately, and since they started patrol that hasn't changed. He hasn't been talking a whole lot, and that suits her fine. She's aware that she comes off as friendly, and even sometimes brightly chatty - and she is in fact both of those things - but there's something about Atlanta at night that gets her in a meditative frame of mind, and the cruiser is a new, a smooth and nearly silent ride, and it's far too easy to go gathering wool. 

But even if that wasn't so, she would like the quiet. It rained heavily about an hour ago, and the cruiser hisses through the puddles and along the slick pavement. The wet reflects the lights of the buildings and the giant colorful corporate logos, some of them gracefully animated, and it's pretty. 

Easy to think the whole city is like this. Even if she knows better. 

She clears her throat, shifts in the seat. It's not entirely comfortable, which she chalks up to the newness. It hasn't been broken in. “What do you mean?” 

“Seen too many trainees come on the job expecting action the first time out. You won't be getting that. Not this part of town, anyway.” He nods at the sleek glassy buildings - all recent construction - and the orderly lines of traffic, the broad but mostly deserted sidewalks, the overall _cleanliness_ of the place. “You see all this? Each one of these corps has its own security force. Practically goddamn armies. They get to everything before we do. And there's hardly ever anything. Not for us.” 

Beth arches a brow. “Seriously? They say crime rate’s been up the last few years.” 

“Not here. All you'll get around here is white collar. Embezzlement, corporate espionage. We got nothing to do with any of that.” He shakes his head. “Not our turf. Thank Christ.” 

She allows herself her own small smile. “Too boring for you?” 

Rick does turn his head then, huffs a laugh. “Didn't say _I_ didn't appreciate some action. Now and then.” 

“Well, y’know what they say.” She gazes out at the gleaming night, drumming her fingers against the gently sloping inside of the passenger door. She doesn't actually want any action, any excitement. This is good. “About wishin’. And bein’ careful.” 

~ 

The problem is that he's not sure when he was even last outside.

That's not quite accurate; it's not _the_ problem. He has a lot of problems right now. Two more sharp turns, jump across a small gap, one more fall, and he's just about positive that his feet are cut. Not shot yet, small mercies, but not for lack of trying on their part. He's not tired, barely even winded, but he's running out of rooftop, and the glittering towers that surround him now aren't close. Unless there's something beneath the approaching edge that he can't see… 

City. He knows. Familiar. There's so much he doesn't remember. They took from him, they _stole,_ and a surge of rage transfers into a surge of speed as he rounds another corner, jumps another gap, makes his way as fast as he can along a narrower ledge, ducking to keep his head out of view through the windows just above. This is familiar. _Atlanta?_ The name fits, then sticks, and he can't dislodge it, so that must be right. 

He's been here. He's been out. Before the room and the corridor and the doctors and the needles and the _pain,_ there was an _out,_ and with the cool damp air rushing into his lungs, he's committed, committed to fucking _death_ : he's never going back there. Never. He gets away now, or he dies. 

Ugly memory, then, just as he comes to the end of the ledge and the roof should open up in front of him again, just as lights flare into blinding being in front of him and he cringes away, just as what sounds like a chorus of amplified voices orders him to _stop right fucking there_ and bullets rattle into the concrete at his feet, and maybe they won't kill him but they will sure as shit blow his fucking feet _off_ \- 

_Because can't they just give him new ones?_

_-_ and it comes, a voice that isn't amplified, that's a low purr, all smooth self-satisfied menace. He was told this very early on: he has two choices. He can cooperate. He can fight them, and what they're going to do to him will happen anyway. 

_You should know, there is no door number three._

Oh yes there fucking is.

They can kill him. He can _make_ them kill him. It'll betray whatever Sherry sacrificed for him, and that sucks, but he's _not going back there._ He can rush them now, charge forward into the lights and the gunfire, and if he's violent enough they'll basically have to use lethal force to take him down - or that's what he wants to believe, what he has to believe, because the alternative is unacceptable. Behind him he hears more boots, rattle of gear, another couple of voices. No way back. Not that there ever was. 

He lowers his center of gravity. Drops his head like a bull. Inhales. Sherry. He's very sorry for that. Wishes he could tell her so. But it was too late for him a long damn time ago. 

And his veins explode into flame, and he watches in utter shock as his right arm rises and holds itself outstretched, and falls apart. 

~ 

“So why'd you wanna do this anyway?” 

Not woolgathering this time, but Rick’s question is still unexpected. Beth glances up at him, and now he's not making a pretense of scanning the road. The cruiser can slip easily into autodrive when it senses any signs of flagging attention, and there's no danger. Ricks hands are still on the yoke, but he's studying her, and he's not trying to hide it. And while normally it might make her squirm, might make her a lot more uncomfortable than that, she doesn't detect anything untoward in that cool gaze.

He's doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing, aside from training her. He's evaluating her. Taking note of everything. And she remembers what one of her better academy instructors said, when she took her first course on crime scenes: _You see everything. Most people just don't know how to retrieve the info. For them, it’s passive. You need to learn how to make it active. You need to learn how to_ look. _Not just see._

So she bears up under the scrutiny, shrugs, gives him another faint smile. “The money’s good.” 

“Mm, not that good. People don't do CAS because they want a good paycheck. Steady, sure, but.” Rick mimics her shrug. “Everyone I ever met on the force is either running _from_ something or running _to_ something. Which are you?” 

Beth cocks her head. This is beginning to feel like a bit of a game - not one that she necessarily has to win; she isn't positive there _is_ a way to win. Though there's very likely a way to lose. “Doesn't anyone just wanna help people anymore?”

Rick laughs again, turning back to the road and swinging left down a quieter, darker street. “You think people are like that?” 

“There are still good people, Rick.” 

“Yeah,” Rick says quietly, and his smile is lingering. “I guess there are, at that.” Pause. The radio crackles. “You didn't answer the question.” 

Beth sighs. If she's being tested, she'll take the test. “I guess… I mean, I really do wanna help people. But also…” She worries at her lip for a few seconds. Then: “I grew up on a farm. Youngest, y’know? My big brother, my sister… My sister went off to college, my brother’s gonna take over the farm from Daddy when Daddy gets older, and I wanted to do somethin’ different. That's all. Just… Just different.” 

“So you figured you'd be a cop, Greene?” 

She gives him a little smirk. “Well, I wasn't gonna join the army or whatever. Wanted to be closer to home.”

“You're a country girl.” 

“Yeah. But I like Atlanta.”

“You like what you've seen.” A grim edge has suddenly made its way into his voice, though there's no sign of it on his face. “You wait. Sooner or later it won't be so nice to you.” 

“Yeah, people keep sayin’ stuff like that.” She turns slightly in the seat - her turn to study him. “What about you? Why did you-” 

Rick cuts her off with a raised hand, leaning forward over the yoke, eyes narrowed. The street ahead of them is opening back up to three lanes, brighter and busier, but she can't see anything out of the ordinary. No one driving any way they shouldn't be. Only a couple of strolling pedestrians. The radio crackles again, mutters to itself, but it's a break-in on the other side of town. She frowns at him. “What?” 

“You hear that?” 

“Rick, what?”

“Are those gunshots?” 

~ 

It doesn't actually fall apart. It's worse than that. 

It _unfolds._

He gapes at it as it does. His hand snaps up and out, unhinges, curls downward and flat against the inside of his arm as his flesh opens like wings, revealing glossy black bars that flick into a slender curve, a half-moon of inky metal. A series of clicks as it locks into place, another click as something slides out of his upper arm and into the center above where his knuckles used to be. Tipped sharp silver. It glistens. 

_Strapped to the table, lights searing his eyes even when he closes them. All searing. He's screaming, struggling, and they don't care. They don't give a shit. They're too busy ripping him apart. They're too busy lacing his muscles and bones with fire._

Fuck them.

He flexes something deep inside his shoulder, and that wicked silver tip flies. 

There's a _thunk,_ a yell, the lights flicker, and he sees that they're harder core than the ones who were chasing him to start with - they've got body armor, helmets, and the thing he just fired from his arm is protruding from the facemask of the one in front of him, the inside of the visor splattered red, all slow motion as the man slumps wordlessly to the ground. 

Right about then is when he realizes that there is a door number three after all. 

“ _Take the shot!_ ” 

And they do. The bullets rip through the air around him; doesn't matter because he's not there when they reach him. He's spinning, dropping to one hand and whipping his bare foot out, slamming it into the thigh of the one behind him; a panicked yelp as that one drops. Already his arm up again, already another one of those beautiful little things loading itself, twinkling like a star as it punches through the vest of the one beside the first. Can't see faces; probably better that way, because before, this wasn't personal, except now he hates them. He fucking _hates_ them. They didn't do this to him, but they want to take him back where the people who _did_ can do it _more_ , and you know what? _You know fucking what?_

He doesn't want to die. 

Took out three that he can count. Doesn't know how many of those bolts the ammunition pouch in his shoulder can hold. But unlike when this whole excursion started, he's more than willing to find out, and he lunges at the rest of them, ignoring the bullets, pulling his internal trigger over and over without bothering to aim. He watches bodies fall, can't count anymore and doesn't try, measures everything by air pressure, sound and light levels, calculations too rapid for him to comprehend. What he knows is that he breaks through into open space, darting forward and dodging into the shadows, tearing up to that edge and calmly noting the gap between him and the roof-ledge across the narrow street, blur of traffic below, and _flinging_ himself across. 

Hits. Rolls. Is on his feet, angry pained cries behind him. 

_Run._

~ 

The radio crackles, breaks into speech, and it's not a mutter. 

“ _187, fourth and Peachtree, multiple victims, suspect is fleeing on foot-”_

Rick curses under his breath. “That’s… Shit, that’s two blocks over.” He touches the bud in his ear. “Control, this is 133 responding.” He's still speaking as he guns the engine and swings hard right across traffic - and up, the jets on the cruiser’s underside growling as it sends them into the air, sudden enough to make Beth gasp but fast enough and smooth enough that there's barely a hiccup in the traffic flow. 

“- _white male, assume armed and extremely dangerous.”_

Rick shoots her a look as he engages the stabilizers. “You ever been airborne in one of these things?” 

“These?” Beth coughs. It's not completely a laugh. She's abruptly very glad that she's strapped in. “Not like this.” 

“Academy runs don't capture it, do they? And not this new.” He grimaces and reaches between them, pulls the gearshift all the way back, and the acceleration presses Beth into her seat and the air out of her lungs in a soft _oof_. “Looks like you're gonna get to see some action after all.” 

~ 

Freedom. This is freedom. It’s exhilarating. It explodes through him, searing in a way those lights and that pain never did. It's what was in Sherry’s needle, what set him running, woke his whole body up, woke up something _inside him_ , his arm that isn't his arm, moving faster than he should ever be able to move, taking a jump he never should have been able to take, because he retains no clear memory of a time before the room and the needles and the pain, but he knows what his body is capable of.

Thought he knew. 

No sound anymore but the thunder of his heart, windstorm of his breath, the impact of his feet all the way up to his temples. He's a living orchestra of rhythm. He's a one-fucking-man-band.

They're behind him. He knows it. Glances back; they're scaling the walls, throwing tether-lines, swarming. He no longer believes that they won't shoot immediately to kill. Doesn't care; that's still a better door than one or two. Freedom or death, except before he didn't think so actively about spreading that death around.

He's killed people. He's killed a lot of people. He doesn't know how many. 

He's totally willing to kill more. 

He leaps up across a ledge to a higher one, runs up a window and hauls himself over the lip of the roof at the top. One getting too close; he whirls on his ass and puts a bolt through the prick’s unprotected throat. 

At some point he runs out, right? 

Right? 

Fuck it. He really does want to laugh. No breath to spare for it, but it would feel so good, and if he does ever get his breath back, he will. He’ll laugh and laugh, and then he’ll run some more, not because he has to but because he _can._

The night is made of pale jewels. Towers of windows, mirrored and un-mirrored, wonderful. It's beautiful out here. It's worth killing for. 

A roar behind him - above him. He wheels, looks up. Blur of rotor blades and a spotlight pouring through the mist. Not the only one; another to his left. All black, with a logo on the side that he can't make out. Knows it, but it's useless information. It won't save him. It won't free him. Only one thing will do that. 

_Run._ Sherry said. Sherry, only friend in the world Sherry, he knows what a friend is. A friend helps you even when they shouldn't. A friend gives something of themselves so you can have more. Except all he knows about her is her name, and all his laughter melts into tears that threaten to choke him. 

He ducks through a bank of smaller ICC units; no cover. Nowhere to hide from those lights. He's running out of roof again. The chopper is hovering low, more lines unspooling from its insect-like body, figures sliding down. With guns. Not that way, then; he can kill people but there have to be at least ten over there. Other chopper to his right. Straight ahead, then. All he has. Can't see anything over that edge but air; saw it from a ways back and higher up, and it's a plaza full of benches and carefully trimmed trees. Nearest building after this one is hundreds of yards. He can jump but that would take wings. Pretty sure he doesn't have those. Pretty sure he would have noticed. 

Though fuck, _would_ he? 

Only one way to know. Maybe he _can_ fly. Maybe he can take the fall. He's not going back. He's not cooperating. He's not fighting, and then they get their way in spite of it. He's taking door number three, and what's behind that door is either the freedom he's been sucking into his lungs, or his mysterious body burst open on the pavement, and given the alternatives, either is perfectly acceptable. 

It feels good to run. It might be okay to die like this. It might be fine. 

_Thanks, Sherry,_ he thinks, and through the chopper-thunder and the shouts and the gunfire his feet hit the edge of the roof, and then there's nothing under him but air. 

And then there's a lot more under him than that. 

~ 

“Choppers?” Beth leans forward, peers out the windshield as if they might disappear with closer examination. “Did Control-” 

“Those aren't ours.” Rick’s voice is tight, tight as his hands - pale-knuckled on the yoke. He's calm, or he's keeping himself that way, but Beth isn't fooled, and doesn't suspect that she's meant to be so; this is a lot more than whatever Rick meant by _action,_ and the presence of non-CAS choppers in what's supposed to be restricted airspace…

She remembers what he said. All these corp-sec outfits. _Private armies._

“Rick? Should we-” What she's about to say is something she’ll never know. Later she won't have a clue. It also won't matter, but it'll eat away at her, at a tiny corner of her mind like a mouse gnawing away a wooden beam, because as it turns out, this moment is important. 

As it turns out, this moment is everything. 

The impact is so hard and so abrupt, slamming her against her harness and shocking a “ _Fuck!”_ out of Rick, that for a few dazed seconds she's sure they've hit the side of the building. But her vision clears, the stabilizers kick in, she sees the bright windows still yards away from them, and closer, between her and them… 

A face. Inches away, half hidden by wild dark hair, eyes boring into hers. Filthy palms flat against the windshield. _He jumped,_ she thinks. _He jumped. And he's going to reach in and break my neck._

The cruiser tilts, dips sickeningly, blares an alarm that Rick punches off with another vicious curse, and the face is gone. 

She's still trying to process as they spin into a fast descent - too fast, maybe, but she's only dimly aware of the lurch in her stomach. Rick is muttering a steady stream of obscenities under his breath as he wrestles the cruiser back under control, but Beth is staring out the window, watching the lone figure plunge to the street below. 

Seventy feet down. At least. He's dead. No way he's not dead. 

“You have a visual?” 

She looks up, blinking. “I-” 

“ _Beth._ You have a visual on the suspect? _Confirm_.” It comes out in a harsh snap, but she's not stung. Should be quicker. Should be a lot quicker. Shouldn't be just _staring_ like she was. She looks down again, scans the street, the stopped traffic in both lanes, people getting out of their cars and gathering, and she can hear distant shouts of alarm. Sirens. Screams. 

He's lying in the middle of the street. 

“Yeah. I- He's down.” 

It's going to be bloody. _Gruesome_ is how one of her other instructors described it. Falls, jumpers. That kind of death is always uglier than you expect it to be. So far as aesthetics go, it's one of the worst ways to die. And for some reason she doesn't want to see that. She doesn't want to see the face she glimpsed broken and caved in, smeared across the pavement. 

She bites her lip. This is the job. This is quite literally what she signed up for. 

_You don't always get to save people._

But then. 

“Rick?” Her voice sounds so much more quavery than she would like. Disgust at herself: she sounds like a little girl, _country girl,_ and Rick’s report is going to be that she can't hack it. Can't handle it when shit hits all manner of fans. Because wouldn't you believe it; the girl starts _seeing_ things, actual goddamn hallucinations, and there's no way in hell someone who reacts to stress that way should ever be allowed to carry a _Swiss Army knife,_ let alone a badge and a gun. 

“What?” 

“He's, uh.” Almost down. Any second now Rick will see him too - see the shattered body in the street that has to be there, instead of what she's seeing now. “He's gettin’ up.” 

“He's-? No way in hell, he's gotta be-” But the street rises into view and Rick shuts up, bent over the column with his eyes wide and his lips parted, all slack shock, and she knows he sees it too. “No way. No fucking _way_.” 

Drugs, she thinks as the cruiser settles gently onto the ground with a hiss of vapor. Has to be. Drugs can do crazy things these days. People don't feel pain. Don't slow down, don't care about any danger to themselves whatsoever. Get someone so high you could cut their leg off without anesthesia and they'll just pick it up and try to hit you with it, hop down the street after you waving it over their head. 

Except that's beyond stupid. Drugs don't keep bones from breaking. Drugs don't keep your organs in your body when they should be strewn from sidewalk to sidewalk. At least no drug she's ever heard of. 

But he's getting up. Slowly, moving like he's in pain, but he is. 

Rick is shoving the door open and out of the cruiser without another word to her, gun drawn and aimed. “Hands up! Hear me? _Hands the fuck up_ , I _will_ shoot you in the goddamn head!”

 _You sure that would take care of it?_

She can no longer remember her protocol. She can no longer remember whether or not she's meant to be staying in the cruiser and letting Rick handle it, or getting out and helping. She has a sidearm and now she's reaching for it, opening the door, drawing her gun as she climbs out into the cool wet night. The corp-sec choppers drone overhead, searchlights do-see-doing all over the plaza. As one, the gathered crowd seems to take a step back, raised voices anxious. More sirens, more cruisers pulling up closer to the intersection. Everywhere a blaze of light, enhanced buy a hundred thousand reflections. Dreamlike.

But this isn't a dream. 

She aims alongside Rick. The man raises his arms - his _arm,_ and the other thing he has where his arm should be. _Armed and dangerous,_ and she wants to collapse into hysterical giggles. His arm is a goddamn crossbow. The skin on the inside of his other arm is torn away, and what's beneath it is black and slick. A gash across his forehead over his left brow, and that at least appears to be bleeding normally. She notes his torn clothes - hospital scrubs? Something like that - and bare bloody feet, because _you need to learn how to_ look, _not just see,_ but what she can't stop looking at is his eyes. 

He's not looking at the choppers. Not looking at the crowd. Not at Rick. He's looking right at her, and he's not looking away. 

“Jesus Christ,” Rick says somewhere beside her. He sounds almost bewildered. “He's _augmented_.”

Yes, he is. But even that seems inconsequential. There are his eyes - and then there are his lips, and as the world shrieks chaos around them, he mouths two words at her, and actually, she doesn't know how anyone could ever be expected to knowingly sign up for something like this.

_Help me._

 


	2. chew on a bone, we sharpen our teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A murderer in custody, with ridiculously advanced unregistered augmentations and no identity, and nothing to say. Beth suspects that this might be above her pay grade. But she has no idea how far.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM VERY EXCITED THAT PEOPLE ARE EXCITED ❤️

He's not sure what this is, but he's reasonably certain it doesn't qualify as _helping him._

He's also not sure why he asked her anything of the kind, and why he asked _her;_ he sensed instantly that the man with her was hardened, experienced, and even if he was shaking a little at the edges, he was confident in himself and in what he was doing, and in the gun he was aiming squarely head-ward. The girl, on the other hand. Looking like someone kicked her upside the head. Eyes so wide. She had a gun too, but in those seconds she was holding it like she never had before, like she wasn't completely positive how it even worked. She couldn't be remotely equipped to _help him._ Not with what he's up against now.

And he understands that better than he did. Some things are coming back. He feels less fractured. Less scattered. The heat lightning in the needle Sherry stuck him with is subsiding to a warm buzz, but it's still there. Although he hasn't been able to use his arm, and his body feels weirdly and uncomfortably cramped - he suspects it has something to do with the collar they locked around his neck - he feels awake. He’s being flooded with sensory input, so vivid, nearly overwhelming - the humming of the overhead light in this little room, the way it throbs pale down on him and this heavy steel table they've cuffed him to, the cold solidity of the chair under him - ankles cuffed to that as well, they're clearly taking no chances with him and he doesn't at all blame them - and the colder solidity of the poured concrete under the soles of his feet. Not bare anymore; they are indeed cut and they were indeed bleeding, and before they locked him up in here they gave them a cursory cleaning and smeared some stuff on it that he took to be antiseptic, attended to his various other cuts and scrapes, and before they gave him a worn pair of socks they slapped some dermapatches on him that immediately knitted themselves to his skin.

He knows what those are. Intimately fucking familiar. He didn't wince at the sting as they went to work. But he should have said not to bother. They stopped needing to use patches on him a while back.

They'll see. If they can hang onto him for that long.

Alone now. He can hear them talking through the walls, can't make out the words but the tone is tense. Upset. Multiple voices, arguing. About what to do with him, probably, among other things. The air in here tastes sour, old sweat and blood and fear, but he's not scared. Should be, but he's not. Or he's not letting himself be. He's not stupid enough to think he's safe in here, but it's different enough from his room before that he isn't fighting the urge to scream and smash his way loose, and for the moment he’ll wait and see what happens. Anyway, he needs some time to think.

He needs some time to remember _how_ to think, beyond the instinctive calculations he did as he fought. His skills there are a bit rusty.

And he has to own that while he's assuming it won't happen, it is possible, technically, that she might find a way to help him.

~

Rick is mad. No; Rick is a lot more than mad. A lot more complicated. Anger there, sure, but confusion, impatience, and a heavy dose of anxiety above everything else. The Captain is striding away down the hall, past the featureless reinforced doors to the other interrogation rooms, her shoulders hunched beneath her mane of dreadlocks, and Rick is left alone, standing with his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw working.

Beth hesitates a moment or two, then walks over to him. She's been keeping her distance since they got back, and it's likely that she should continue to do so, but she's curious, about what happened and what's happening and what's going to happen next, and now she's caving to that internal pressure.

Rick looks up as she approaches, once again with his eyes narrowed. “Fucking insane.”

She frowns, nonplussed. “What?”

“Him. Results of the scan.” Rick bobs his chin at the door to his right. “You know it's not in-depth enough to catch everything, but the augs it did catch… None of it’s registered. At all.”

 _Oh_. Not hugely common. But that doesn't explain his consternation. “Black market?”

“Guess so, but I've never seen anything like this on the black market. Or off it.” He glances back down the corridor in the direction the Captain retreated. “Neither has she. It's not just his arm. His skin is heavy carbon-weave - should be way more torn up than it is. His spine is completely synthetic. Probably explains why it's not broken. His eyes are implants with enhanced retinas. And a bunch of witnesses are swearing up and down they saw the air around him _glowing_ right before he hit the pavement.”

“That's.” She stops dead, staring at nothing. This isn't a world she knows much about. No one she knows, except for a kid when she was a senior in high school who lost his leg in an accident with a tractor. The stuff everyone hears about on the news, sure. Read stories about it in the Stream. But beyond that… No one is _that_ augmented. No one.

No one could survive it.

“He should be dead,” she murmurs, and Rick snorts.

“No shit.” A beat, then he sighs and swipes his hand down his face. “And his prints aren't on file anywhere. It's like he didn't even exist before tonight.”

She casts a look back at the door to the room, as if she can see through it to the man cuffed inside. “So… So who _is_ he?”

“No idea.” Rick shoots her a grim smile, presses his badge to the reader beside the door. It beeps green. “Let's go ask him.”

~

He watches them come in - silent, unmoving. He keeps his hands exactly where they are, where they were when the man left him: pressed together cuffed wrist to cuffed wrist on the table, that thick steel ring bolted to the tabletop between his hands. His right arm, he's now noticed, has thin seams in it running all up and down, corresponding to the places where it unfolded itself. It's clearly not real flesh, not real skin. He never picked up on that before. Hasn't actually had much scope for self-examination. When he hasn't been on that table getting butchered, or getting pumped full of chemicals like lava, or having electricity spiked through his muscles, he's been unconscious. And/or in the dark.

The man in the beige uniform is looking at that arm. Up at his face. He gazes back steadily. The gun at the man’s hip is very large, but he's not afraid of it. Can't be. He's been through so much worse than that gun could ever mean to him.

There's also _her_.

Hanging back a little, her blond hair very pale in the overheads, big blue eyes even bigger than they no doubt usually are. Biting her lower lip. She's tense all over, nervousness coming off her in waves. She's alarmed by him. By what he is. By what she's seen him do, which he knows enough to know is not normal. Not to her.

Hell, not even to him. And whatever half-remembered idea of _normal_ he once had, it's been pretty much carved up into bloody chunks along with the rest of him.

The man walks to the table, pulls out the chair opposite and sinks smoothly into it. The girl is still keeping a distance. She heads over to the wall and leans back against it, crossing her arms. Those big blue eyes might be alarmed, but they're also watchful. She's seeing everything, and her attention is like a bolt piercing through it.

Those eyes meet his again, and he feels something in him lurch forward, reaching for her, utterly instinctive. As if he senses something in her, something worth reaching for, like whatever it was that made him say what he said to her in the street.

_Help me._

“Hey.” The man snaps stiff fingers under his nose, and he starts, shifts his attention forward. “You're looking at me. At least for now, ‘cause I wanna talk to you.”

He says nothing. Stares with narrow eyes. _So talk._

“We’re still figuring out what to do with you. Don't have the bodies of the people you killed yet. But we know you killed them. Once we tally ‘em up, you're going away for that, for a long damn time. You'll be lucky if they don't take the needle to you.” He pauses, tapping his fingers on the table. The temptation to follow them up and down is… Well, it's tempting. But he resists. Failing to hold this gaze would be a bad move. Makes no difference whether or not this particular person is out to get him in any concerted way; showing weakness is dangerous. He knows that to his fucked-up marrow. “You got anything to say about that?”

 _Sure_. “They was tryin’ to kill me.” Not the whole truth, but true enough. Abundantly clear that the man doesn't know anything about anything. Not comforting.

“Why?”

His jaw tightens. No answer to that.

“That's not gonna help you too much. Especially not if they were corpsec. Deep pockets there. Lotta goddamn lawyers out for your head, putting pressure on the DA. They really _will_ be trying to kill you.” The man sighs and leans forward. “Look. Help yourself out here, maybe we can help you. There's a lot we don't know about you. How about you make it easier, start filling us in. What's your name?”

 _Name_. He wants to laugh. As if that matters. No one has called him by his name in a length of time he won't even attempt to measure. No one gives a shit. To them he was always _The Subject._

Another sigh. Impatience. He's being _uncooperative_. “C’mon. Don't tell me you don't have one. This is basic shit. Give me a name.”

Does he even remember? Does he have one to give? Hasn't thought about it in forever - again, it hasn't mattered. No reason to hold onto it. And he does remember then, all at once, like a punch to the chest: that voice again, the low purring _cruel_ voice, asking him who he was. Not like the owner of that voice didn't know. The owner of that voice knew more than he ever could have, more than he ever did. Asking him over and over, and when he answered wrong it would hurt, and it hurt over and over until he finally answered correctly. _Who are you?_

What was the right answer?

 _Empty him out. There can't be anything left. Blank slate._ Except they failed, didn't they? He answered correctly. Didn't get hurt. He remembers that, even if he doesn't remember what he said.

But he was lying.

He clenches his hands into fists, cool steel against his knuckles. He knows. He has the correct answer to this question, and suddenly he wants to answer it. It doesn't feel like giving in.

“Daryl.”

“Alright, Daryl. We’re getting somewhere.” The man leans back and regards him with vague, cool satisfaction. Irritating. Not quite smugness but closer than is comfortable. He wasn't giving in, but this guy is still a prick. “I'm Rick. So you wanna tell me what you were doing?”

“Doin’ where?”

“On that rooftop. Why was that corpsec group chasing you? And with all that hardware. What the hell did you do to piss ‘em off that much?”

No. There is absolutely no point in trying to explain. And it comes to him: even if Rick isn't out to get him right now, that might change if he lets the wrong thing slip. If he gives Rick a reason to hand him over to _them_. Rick is a cop, he knows cops technically aren't supposed to do things like that, but he also knows that as a rule, cops can't be trusted. Not certain _how_ he knows, because that feels like something he learned before all this, but he's comfortable in the knowledge. Solid. Cops can't be trusted to do what they're supposed to do. They're not just pricks; they lie. They do like everyone does: work entirely to their own interests. If it suits Rick to turn him over, if Rick perceives that he stands to benefit, very likely he will.

Don't trust anyone in a uniform. Ever.

Though there's also _her_.

So he responds only with a scowl.

Rick shrugs. “Suit yourself. It's gonna come out either way. They'll tell us if you don't.” He draws a breath, mutters, “Soon as we find out who the fuck they were.”

Oh. _That's_ interesting.

“You're not gonna talk about that. You're not gonna tell us why they were _allegedly_ trying to kill you. Is there anything you _are_ willing to talk about?”

Silence.

Rick nods at his arm. “How about your augs? They're unregistered. Black market around here is doing brisk business, so that's not surprising. They're high-grade, though. I've never seen anything close to that good. Must’ve cost five or six fortunes. Where'd you get ‘em?”

Yet again, no point. Doesn't want to talk about that anyway. If he cracks open that particular can, he might start screaming, and if he starts screaming he's honestly not sure he'll be able to stop.

“You give us some names there, the DA might be appreciative. Probably good to remember, _Daryl,_ you could be looking at the death penalty. What do you say?”

Now this… This prospect isn't altogether unattractive. He's fairly confident that whoever was doing this to him, they weren't technically supposed to be. As with cops, that doesn't necessarily make any difference at all, but he's well aware that the right name in the right ear can do some major damage to the right people. He wants to hurt them. He wants to hurt them any fucking way he can. He has no names to give, but if he did, tossing them under this particular bus would work just as well for him as killing them.

Except no. That's not true; he realizes a second later. This prospect is appealing, but if he ever takes them on, he wants to look them straight in the eye and do it up close and personal. He wants them to know that it's him, and know why he's doing it.

He wants to track down the owner of that voice and put one of those wicked little silver-tipped bolts in his throat.

And he can't trust Rick.

“Fuck you,” he says, rough and quiet, and Rick laughs and tips his head back and gazes up at the dingy ceiling for a few seconds.

“You're really determined to go down in flames, aren't you?” He lowers his head and rolls a shoulder. “Like I said. Suit yourself.”

Chime. Rick lifts his forearm, pushes back his sleeve and examines a small black square strapped to his wrist. His mouth twists. “Beth, it's the Captain. I'm gonna step out for a minute.” He pushes to his feet, slides the chair back and turns to her, points at the wall where she's standing. “You stay right there. Keep an eye on him. You don't go near the table, not for any goddamn reason. Keep your distance. He seriously tries to come at you somehow, you should make the shot non-lethal if you can, but you take him down however you have to. No hesitation. Clear?”

She nods, her softly round face grave. “Sir.”

Rick looks like he might be about to say something else, brow furrowed and jaw working. Then he huffs a breath and pulls open the door, stalks out, and it swings closed behind him with a _click_.

And he's alone with her. With _Beth_. Alone, and although she has a gun, she's obviously new, and he wonders whether she would actually use it if it came right down to the wire. Wonders, also, whether she might in fact be the right person to tell. Whether she might be trustworthy, even if Rick isn't. Whether she might believe him.

If he begs her to save his life.

~

She does exactly what Rick says. Stays where she is, left arm hugging her middle and her right arm loose at her side - ready to go for her gun if she needs to. She's not looking directly at him, but he's in the periphery of her vision, held and tracked. She's not scared. She knows what scared feels like, and this is not that. This is the same thing she spotted in Rick: anxiety, more nebulous, formless, far more difficult to pin down and without any one obvious cause. She has every reason to believe that the man cuffed to the table in front of her is fantastically dangerous, that he might very well snap her neck if he got the chance, but though he's staring at her in a decidedly unsettling way… She detects no animosity. No aggression. He hadn't liked Rick, that much was crystal clear, but she hadn't detected any overt aggression there either. More a kind of _surliness,_ a stubborn refusal to cooperate. Not a yearning to leap across the table and use his augs to take Rick’s head off.

This man is allegedly a murderer multiple times over, is indeed facing charges that would expose him to an early state-imposed death, looks like just about anyone’s mental image of _mass murderer,_ and yet as far as she can tell, he's not interested in hurting either of them. And when Rick cuffed and collared him in the street, he didn't resist one iota.

And there's what he said to her.

Why the hell would he _say_ that?

Fuck it. She's anxious, but she's not a coward, and she's not going to be cowed. She raises her eyes and looks straight back at him, takes the first good chance she's had to study him in bright light. His eyes might be implants, but no matter how advanced his augs are, she seriously doubts he can _hypnotize_ her. And she can't actually detect anything odd about his eyes - at least not at this distance, though there's no way in hell she's getting closer to check.

His skin, too. Heavy carbon-weave, maybe, but from here most of it could pass for fully organic, what she can see of it - his face, his neck, his left forearm and his right arm where the sleeve has ripped away all the way to the shoulder. That arm is the exception; the surface of the aug is flesh-toned and a good match for the rest of him, but that tone is too even, too flat, and a little too shiny. And even at this distance, the black seams crisscrossing its smooth surface are impossible to miss. The other forearm looks more natural, but even there, at least around the tear in the skin, something is clearly off.

Something aside from the gleaming black metal she saw beneath it.

Other than that, though? Nothing. His clothes - vaguely like hospital scrubs, plain white, now very dirty and torn in multiple places - and the wild tangle of dark hair partially obscuring his eyes serve to give him that Mass Murderer appearance, but beyond that he looks normal. And as long as the aug suppression collar is functional and fastened around his neck, he'll stay that way.

The scrubs. The bare feet. She cocks her head, and as the dots easily connect themselves, she wonders if Rick had the same thought. It's not as if one would need to be an especially sharp detective to pick it up.

“Did you escape from somewhere?”

Something behind his eyes flares. Literally seems to _flare;_ it might be her imagination, flash of light catching those enhanced retinas as his lids widen, but it might very well be something else. Deeper. His fingers twitch against the table.

“Why?”

She lifts her chin at him. “You're dressed like a damn mental patient. And you don't have shoes.”

He huffs a laugh. It's a faintly surprised laugh, more surprise than amusement, but there's a bit of that as well. To her ears, it doesn't sound like the kind of laugh an escaped mental patient might have.

Though it's not like she's well-acquainted with that segment of the population, so who knows.

“Why you care?”

“Why do you care if I care?” she shoots back evenly. “I'm just askin’. Why wouldn't you want to say?”

He jerks his head at the door. “You ain't like him.”

So apparently he's ignoring the question. Oh, well. It's not like she's being observed on her interrogation technique. Unless she is and no one bothered to tell her. “I'm a trainee.”

“You ain't a cop?”

“No, I'm-” She looks down, shakes her head and smiles slightly. Awkwardly. It's still odd to think about herself like this. “I guess you'd say I'm half a cop.”

His eyes narrow as he scans her up and down. She takes it, and it doesn't creep her out like she might have expected. There's nothing nasty in that gaze. Nothing unpleasantly seeking. He's not imagining what she looks like under her uniform, she's pretty sure. He's just interested. “So why the fuck’re you in here?”

“I told you. I'm a trainee. Rick’s...” It abruptly occurs to her - and it should have before now - that talking to him like that might be a very bad idea. On the other hand, if he decides she's nothing to contend with, drops his guard and says something useful… “He’s supervising me.”

Perhaps this was also on Rick’s mind, when he left her alone in here. She glances at the large pane of reflective glass at the far end of the room.

“He left you in here,” he says, and it jars her, though she thinks she manages to conceal it; he can't possibly be able to read minds. And no - he ducks his chin down at the cuffs around his wrists. “With me.”

“You gonna do somethin’?”

“The fuck could I do? You got me chained up like a damn animal.” He twists his neck, a look of visceral distaste crossing his features, and she gets it: the collar. “And this fuckin’ thing.”

“What’re we supposed to do? Leave your augs active? _Are_ you crazy? You killed people with your _arm_.”

He's silent, glaring at her.

She crosses her other arm over her chest, shifting her weight from foot to foot and sighing. Her impatience is only partially feigned. “Well? Didn't you? Did you kill people or not? Did we get the wrong guy? Look, I get how maybe you don't wanna say anythin’ to the people who locked you up like this, but like Rick said, it's gonna come out eventually. You might as well-”

“I killed people.”

It's low. Quiet. Emotionless - except not, not quite. Beneath the flat voice there's a current of heavy darkness. He's not happy about what he's saying. Not happy to be saying it. Not happy that - at least so far as he believes - it's true.

“Alright,” she says, equally quiet. “Why?”

“I said already. They was tryin’ to kill me.”

“ _Why?_ ”

He's silent again, chewing his lip - and she's all but positive that it's not the same stubbornness she saw before. He was refusing to talk, then. Now what she senses in him is reluctance, and uncertainty, his fingers pulling at each other over the steel ring. He's not resisting. He's trying to figure out _what_ to say.

“I asked you to help me,” he says at last. Soft, barely above a whisper. “You gotta… They didn't start out tryin’ to kill me. Alright? They was tryin’ to get me _back_.”

She inhales, fists clenched, a tremble running all through her. Edge of adrenaline. She was right. He decided she wasn't a threat to him, his guard went down, and now he's talking. “So you _did-_ Tryin’ to get you back to _what?_ ”

“Beth. You can't let ‘em.” He runs right over her, and now he's pleading, low and urgent, and if he's faking it, trying to play her, he's an Oscar-worthy actor. The sudden dread in his eyes is as real as anything she's ever seen. His guard went down, yes; that's not all that did. It's as if a dam broke in him, and he's feeling things he wasn't before. _Allowing_ himself to feel. “They kept me in the _dark_. Hurt me, bad. Cut me up. They did it over and over. I ain't goin’ to prison. They ain't gonna let that happen. They're gonna get me back from you, and if they do-”

The room explodes into red flashing and piercing warbles. Beth cringes in on herself, hands flying to her ears as she tries to look around. She recognizes it, knows a fire alarm when it happens… But there's something about this one.

Something feels very wrong.

She manages to focus on Daryl. Daryl, twisting in the chair, leaning toward her, his eyes frantic as he yells to be heard over the din. “Get the collar off me! _Get it the fuck off!_ ”

She's straightening up, reaching for her gun. But she's also moving forward, her suddenly treacherous feet carrying her toward him, and she's not even trying to make herself stop. “Why?”

“ _Now_.” He yanks uselessly at the cuffs, and that's when she knows she's going to do it. Not why. Not what she expects to happen as a result. Not what's going to happen to her career. Not how completely she's lost her mind. Simply that she will. This man begged her to help him, and she's going to. “They're comin’. They're _here_.”


	3. it's too late to change events

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Begged by a bizarrely augmented murder suspect to help him escape, Beth wonders if she's completely lost her mind. But as it turns out, she might lose a lot more than that. And she won't be alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally the front end of what ended up being a much longer chapter, and in the interest of expediency I decided to split the thing in half to give you a chapter faster and give me some time to get things in good shape with the second part (and buy me time to work some stuff out). So it shouldn't be too long a wait for chapter 4.
> 
> I need to warn/remind you that this, like Howl, is _immensely_ plot-heavy, and writing immensely plot-heavy things - unless you are guided by the hands of angels, as it was with I'll Be Yours For a Song and to some degree Everything Where it Belongs - in serial fashion is both terrifying and dangerous. Despite my best efforts there may be inconsistencies here and there. There may be plot holes or flubs. This is especially more likely given that there's an intense amount of world-building in this thing and I'm doing a lot of it kind of on the fly. 
> 
> That said, thank you so so much for reading, especially you "I usually don't like this genre" people. You are lovely and thank you for giving me a chance. 
> 
> ❤️

It’s only after she gets to him that she realizes she can’t help him after all.

He twists again when she stops in front of him, not struggling this time but moving to allow her easier access to the collar and the cuffs. But as she’s reaching for the release pad on the collar, seconds before her thumb presses against it she knows it won’t work, and her stomach sinks toward her boots.

“What?” His voice still frantic, though he’s obviously also trying to hold it together. He’s terrified, and given how he’s behaved so far, that’s surreal. “The fuck’s wrong?”

She swallows with a click in her throat, bizarrely audible to her over the blaring alarm. “I can’t unlock it. My print isn’t in the system.”

“You’re.” He stares at her, vaguely incredulous. “You’re a fuckin’ _cop_.”

“I’m _half_ a cop.” She’s actually kind of exasperated now. If this wasn’t both frightening and seriously confusing it would be more than a little comical in the most absurd possible way. “I just got here today, I don’t even officially _work_ here yet.”

His face hardens into a grimace and he yanks again at the cuffs - uselessly. She gazes at him with her hands lingering close to his neck, helpless. “You are fuckin’ _kiddin’_ me.” The table rattles against the floor but remains bolted; the interrogation room was designed with the idea that someone might try to make weapons out of the furniture. “Who can unlock it? You gotta get ‘em. You gotta get ‘em _right fuckin’ now_.”

“Hold on.” Is this sanity reasserting itself? It might be. She withdraws her hands and looks at him with narrow eyes, doubt prickling through her. “Why’re you so sure this is them? Whoever _they_ are. Why would they have anythin’ to do with a _fire alarm?_ ”

“I dunno.” He’s back to pleading. His eyes, his voice - desperate. Not faked. It can’t be. “But it’s them, and if they’re doin’ it like this-” He surges upward, cuffs digging into his wrists so deep it must be painful. Assuming he can even feel anything with that aug skin. “If they’re doin’ it like this, I’m not the only one needs to be runnin’.”

“That doesn’t make any _sense_. You can’t-”

“ _You don’t know,_ ” he snarls, teeth bared, and she gasps - not afraid of him. That’s not what this is. This is something else entirely. “You don’t know what they can _do_.”

 _Shit_.

“Rick,” she breathes, and steps away, striding toward the door. Behind her, Daryl lets out a wordless sound of surprised anger, but she glances back, her jaw set.

She’s out of her goddamn mind. She should be guarding him like she was ordered to do, or she should be looking for explanations regarding what’s going on, instructions regarding what she should do, and an exit, in that order, and she should confine herself to those things and _only_ those things.

If she does somehow manage to get Daryl free, she’s not looking at a destroyed career. She’s looking at prison time.

But he’s so scared. And she genuinely believes him, even if there’s no reason why she should. He doesn’t _feel_ like a murderer. Not that she’s ever met one, but Daddy said something to her just before she left for the academy, and she’s never known Daddy to be wrong about anything like this when it matters.

 _You’ve got a good brain in your head, Bethy. You’ve got a_ gut, _too. You listen to it. When it’s telling you something, you listen close as you can. Your brain will help you find your way through problems, yes. But your gut will save your life._

She’s out of her goddamn mind. So she’s not going to bother listening to it anyway.

She pulls in a breath and throws the door open and charges out into the hall, hand on the butt of her gun.

~

And instantly she's drowning in chaos.

For what seems like easily ten minutes, she stands at the end of the hall where it opens out into the bullpen and gapes at what she's seeing. If something is actually happening, it should be like a goddamn _fire drill,_ the kind she used to do regularly from elementary school onward. People stop what they're doing, get whatever stuff they absolutely have to bring, and move in an orderly fashion to the exits. For some reason it hadn't occurred to her what would be done with anyone in lockup, and no one has yet filled her in with that little detail. but she assumes they have a plan for that as well. And if it’s not actually an emergency, it _definitely_ shouldn't be like this.

People are hurrying in multiple directions, some with weapons drawn, some in twos or threes and some alone. A couple of larger groups are making their way through the flashing lights and the scattered officers to the emergency exits, and she spots a couple of rough-looking men in cuffs being herded along. Voices rise above the clanging of the alarm, fragmentary words incomprehensible to her, some maintaining an authoritative tone and others clearly edging toward panic. But even the chaos isn't what seizes her and fixes her to the spot, and turns her blood to chilled water.

It's the people closer to the elevator and stairway that lead down to the basement and the cells, bent over desks and crouched on the floor, one or two sprawled, blood trickling from their eyes and noses, smeared across their cheeks, running over their chins. A couple of other people are trying to get them upright, get them moving, shoulders under their arms and holding them by the waist.

The ones on the floor don't look exactly alive.

This is not a fire.

Doesn't matter. It _does,_ but it also doesn't. She has to get moving. She doesn't need to understand the details of what this is to get herself out of it, to get _Daryl_ out of it, because if she doubted him before, that's gone now. She rushes forward into the fray, toward where she knows Rick’s desk is - and pauses halfway there to give the bleeding people an agonized look.

She should go to them. She should try to help. She can't just _leave_ them. And then she's turning aside and no longer looking for Rick, making her way to the people nearer the stairs, halting beside an older woman in street clothes bracing herself on the back of a chair and coughing flecks of bloody foam onto her sleeve.

 _Don't_.

The thing about listening to her gut is that her gut isn't always in total agreement with itself. She curls an arm around the woman’s middle, hugs her, tugs her upward. “C’mon,” she gasps. Something is beginning to burn in her throat. “We gotta go. We gotta-”

But the woman is shaking her off - weak, but determined. “No.” She coughs again, rasping. Rattling. Beth figures you don't need to have to be a doctor to know that's bad. “You go. Get away. It came from the stairs. It's… It’ll _kill_ you.” With a jerk she forces her head up, meets Beth’s eyes, and her own are bloody and stricken - and Beth recognizes her as one of the people who gave her a smile and a nod as she was headed to her briefing with Rick. One of the people who immediately made her less irritatingly nervous.

And all she can think to do is whisper _I'm sorry._

The woman shakes her head. Hisses through her clenched bloodstained teeth. “ _Go_.”

Beth releases her and whirls and goes. Nausea is knotting her up, burning in her gut - burning like her throat. Like her eyes. Someone shoves past her, almost knocks her over, and as she stumbles and rights herself she scrubs instinctively at her left eye, trying to clear a sudden blur.

She blinks down at her fingers. Color is difficult to discern in the wildly shifting light, but she knows that what they're streaked with is red. Not a lot of it. But it's unmistakable.

Dimly, she hears a fresh wave of screaming.

Something - some _one_ \- else slams into her and she nearly goes down for a second and maybe final time, but a strong hand is closing around her shoulders and holding her, another hand cupping her jaw and tilting her face up. The hand is warm and rough, and Rick is looking down at her, searching her face, his own eyes wide with what she recognizes as blatant fear. Suddenly she wants to cry.

She left that woman. She just _left_ her. She can't do this. She was stupid to think she could ever do this, because when everything falls apart, she freezes. She's useless.

“Beth?” He swipes at her cheek with his thumb, curses under his breath. “ _Shit,_ Beth, hold on. Hold on, I'm gonna get you outta here.”

And she could let him. She wants to let him. She wants to buckle under the strain, go ahead and be a useless little girl, let him carry her out and soak in the shame - assuming she even survives. But as she's opening her mouth to say something like _okay,_ Daryl’s terrified face snaps into focus in her inner vision, his voice desperate in her ear.

_You don’t know. You don’t know what they can do._

She's finding out.

“No.” She grips his wrist with her bloody hands. She has to make him understand. Somehow she has to make him believe her. “Rick, we gotta get Daryl out. This is- It’s _him_ they're here for.”

Rick stares at her in clear and utter bewilderment, silent, lips moving. Then he's tightening his grip on her, starting to pull her toward what she recognizes as the closest exit. Toward, she abruptly realizes, a lot of the screaming. “The hell’re you talking about? Who’s _they?_ Beth, there's no-”

“There's no _time_.” She watches herself, as if in the midst of one of those out-of-body experiences you hear about, as she reaches up and curls her fingers into a fold of Rick’s shirt - half to help keep herself on her feet and half because _he needs to listen to her._ “You gotta help me. They're not gonna stop otherwise.”

As if she knows that. But then again, she does.

Rick glances down at her hand gripping his shirt and back up at her, his expression melting from fear into something darker - not anger. But he's not entertaining this. And he's still pulling at her. “You're not making any sense. You're _sick_. And I'm gonna get you outta here if I have to _carry_ you. Let's go.”

It's not really such a leap. Not at this point. She's come this far - she's agreed to help free a suspect in multiple homicides, she's left an innocent woman to die, and now she's trying to drag Rick in with her. And she might be dying too, the burn in her throat and eyes worse and worse every second. She only has so much further to fall. Surely this can't be more than another few feet.

She'll keep telling herself that.

She hauls in a rough breath, and by the time she exhales her gun is in her hand and the muzzle is jammed into Rick’s stomach just below his ribs, and her hand is shaking so bad but her finger is on the trigger.

She hasn't chambered a round. She wonders if he'll notice. Wonders if it'll matter.

She's so _fucked_.

Rick gazes down at her for seconds that stretch out and out, become elastic, become unquantifiable. All around them the chaos continues, but here, between them, everything has gone still and cold. His eyes, those blue ice-chip eyes, keen as blades, piercing her and chilling the air. They drop to the gun. Rise back to her. She looks back and manages to take another breath, though the air scrapes through her chest like sandpaper.

This is more than insanity. This is something for which she doesn't even know the name.

“Beth,” Rick says - and she doesn't have the first clue how she can hear him over the alarm, because he's speaking softly, slowly. Dangerously. “You put that down now, and you come with me.”

It's a bluff. It's a _really bad_ bluff, and he's seeing right through it, and she's fucked. But she doesn't holster the gun, and she doesn't put it down. “I'm sorry. I can't. Please, Rick. You gotta.” She blinks, hard. She's crying blood. A significant portion of her still wants him to simply knock her unconscious and throw her over his shoulder. She's actually not sure why he hasn't done that already. Her voice rises, pained and hoarse and rushed in her own ears. Just as pleading as Daryl’s, despite the gun in her hand. “I know you don't know me, I _know_ you got no reason to trust me, but _I need you to trust me_. Please, help me _get him out._ ”

She does drop the gun, then, because _to hell with it_. It thumps to the threadbare carpet. Rick’s eyes flick down to it and once more return to her.

Something flickers in them, and she doesn't think it's just a trick of the light.

It feels like yet another elastic eternity, and yet again it's probably only another few seconds before he bobs his chin downward and releases her.

“Pick that up.”

This is not what she expected. Not that she expected much of anything. “Why?”

“Whatever this is, you're gonna need it.”

Numbly, she bends, curls her fingers around it, but on her way back up she wobbles and almost pitches forward. The room doesn't stop wobbling as Rick pulls her up, arm around her waist and supporting her, and as they start awkwardly forward she shudders and retches.

Slaps a hand to her mouth. It comes away bloody, but she's reasonably certain it's just her eyes. Her nose, maybe. She doesn't taste fresh copper.

She’ll believe that, because the alternative is more than she can take right now.

“Gonna get your damn fool self _killed,_ ” Rick is hissing. But he's not stopping. If anything he's speeding up, half carrying her. “Gonna get _me_ killed. Crazy fucking girl…”

And he’s right. Bleeding, gun clutched in one hand, the world falling apart all around her, and she's helping this criminal to escape, this _man,_ this man who she would be best advised to leave behind and forget about. Because another thing her sage gut is telling her, that she won't attempt to ignore, is that this man is going to get her into trouble she can't even conceive of.

That what she's in now is only the beginning.

 


	4. this is a low flying panic attack

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With deadly chaos reigning in the station, Beth and Rick have made a daring and highly questionable decision. But it's the only thing that might save them - and a whole lot of other people.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So at least for now, this is much harder to write than Howl, and so far I feel as though I'm in significantly greater danger of writing myself into a corner. I'm doing my best to avoid that, but I beg your forbearance if the pace of updates isn't what I would like it to be, and if - even worse - you end up having to do a tiny bit of disbelief-suspension at some point (or indeed more than one point). 
> 
> Though I suppose some movies with obscene budgets are guilty of worse sins. 
> 
> ❤️

It's the fucking _noise_ that he can't deal with.

Door shut and locked automatically behind her - that's so convenient, this is going so goddamn great - but it's doing little to drown out the cacophony of voices, cries and shouts, the howling of the alarm, and sirens somewhere in the distance. It's an infernal chorus, and it's louder than it should be, louder than he knows it actually is, and he's piercingly aware by now that there are things he can do that they can't do, and he only knows about a few of them so far, and if they fucked with his skin and his eyes it's entirely possible if not likely that they fucked with his other senses as well. And the thing they locked around his neck isn't successfully suppressing all of it.

Probably a safe bet that the cops don't know about that part.

He wants to smash his head against the table. He can't see them, because at least it appears that he can't see through walls, but he can feel them like a hand hovering fractions of an inch above an arm, teasing the hairs upright. He can feel them close, closer every second, and he has all the information he needs to conclude that the screams outside are because of _them_.

Because of him.

A snarl rips through him and before he can scrape together any remaining self-control he's yanking at the cuffs again, snapping the cable - thin but something he knows well is how deceiving appearances can be - against the welded loop in the tabletop, rocking his whole body furiously back and forth in the chair. That hot buzz in his muscles had smoldered down but now it's rising again, coalescing into a swarm of angry bees racing through his veins - blocked, smacking into an invisible screen and thrumming up even angrier than before, like a million infinitely small drums beating against the walls of his augmented cells.

If it weren't for the fucking collar. If it weren't for that, he could.

He could.

He's setting his center of gravity against the table for another pointless attempt when the door swings open and in comes that smug cop prick - _Rick,_ and if he was the kind of person who found rhymes amusing he might smile at that one - and, leaning against his side, the half-cop.

The girl.

The girl is bleeding - steady ooze from her nose to her lips, as if she's been punched. But he knows she hasn't. She looks up and meets his eyes, blood trickling from the corners of hers, and everything in him hurtles dead-weight toward the floor. Because if this is what's happening to her, then the screams outside, the chaos he can hear, can _feel_ like the threat of pressure on his skin.

He told her she didn't know what they could do.

Neither did he.

Rick, for his part, isn't bleeding from anywhere that he can see. Looks like shit warmed over, though, and freaked out, dancing along the serrated edge of fear, and there's something about that that's almost reassuring in a horrible way, because he doesn't look so damn smug anymore.

Then all he can focus on is the girl.

He's about to shove himself up as close to being on his feet as he can, opening his mouth to say something he hasn't thought through at all and doesn't care to, but before he can say anything Rick is bearing the girl forward and lowering her down, transferring her weight from him to the edge of the table. She braces herself up and gives Rick a nod - _I'm alright_ \- but her hair is hanging in her face, the ends of a couple strands stuck together all red, crimson far too brilliant against her far too pale skin.

Rick leaves her, hurries around the table and bends close to him, reaching for the collar. “I can't believe I'm doing this. Hold still.”

Oh, Christ. She did. He tips his head to the side and gazes at her as Rick fumbles at the collar, something turning over in his chest. He begged her to help him, and she had no real reason to, and she did. And now she's bleeding all over the fucking table.

“What the fuck’s wrong with her?”

“I dunno. Whatever it is, it's getting a lot of ‘em. They were all going for the exits, but they…” He trails off and frowns, eyes briefly distant and lips moving, and the collar opens with a click, slips free and into Rick’s hands. Hateful little metal band wound through with black filament, open by a print panel the size of his thumbnail.

He fills his lungs and something breaks inside him, and as a bright fist slams into his chest and pours through him like warm rain, the buzz surges to a roar.

“They should all be out by now,” Rick is saying, straightening, lifting his head and looking back at the open door - more cries pouring through it, terror and pain, and the air itself is growing acrid. “Wait, they should-”

Daryl _stands up._

It's easy. He doesn't think about it. There's a stretch-snap at his wrists and his ankles like breaking fabric, the feeling of something slithering across his skin, and then he's on his feet and wrenching himself away from that fucking table and that fucking chair, and if he could twist them into scrap with his bare fucking hands he absolutely would.

Somewhere in the periphery of his vision, he's aware of Rick, and of the look of total, slack disbelief on that formerly smug face.

But he doesn't have the luxury of basking in it. Rick isn't bleeding that he can see, but that doesn't mean he won't. Doesn’t mean Daryl won't. In fact, it's occurred to him that he might be somehow immune to whatever this is, because if they can they very likely still want to capture their precious lab rat alive, but no reason to be sure there either. They might be just as pleased to do an autopsy. Cut him up one final time and toss his parts into tanks full of bubbling preservative.

_Fuck no._

He pushes past Rick, kicking the end of one ankle cuff under the table, reaches for the girl - _Beth,_ Rick called her Beth - and pulls her up and into the curve of his arm. She's so goddamn light, he lifts her with no real effort at all, but her head lolls worryingly, though she lifts it a second later and her eyes focus on his.

“You got her? ‘cause we gotta get her the hell outta here before she gets worse.” Rick steps back, toward the door and starting to turn; the look he tosses Daryl’s way continues to feature a healthy dose of bewilderment, but for the moment that's apparently all he's prepared to indulge.

Good. Maybe he can work with this prick after all. At any rate, it doesn't feel like a trap.

He nods, solid hold pinning Beth against his side. She's standing, though she's breathing in rough gasps, and that's something to be glad about, in a profoundly grim way. “Then let’s get goin’ already.”

Out the door and down the hall, the cries louder, and he considers the merits of simply gathering her up against his chest and carrying her like a kid. But she's fighting - not fighting _him_ but fighting to keep her feet, determination woven through the tension in her muscles. And she's strong; he can feel that too.

So no. He won't carry her.

Down the hall until it opens out into a much larger room; he remembers this, even if they dragged him through it pretty damn quick and at that point he felt bombarded by the world from all sides. He remembers it but it wasn't anything then like it is now, all violently flashing lights, that dizzying cacophony he heard from the room, a sensation of rushing and the stink of fear in the air beneath the thinner, more acidic scent of whatever the fuck is doing all of this, and overturned chairs, a few terminals on their sides- And bodies. Not many, not that he can see, but bodies.

He’s lost track of how many people he's killed tonight, and he looks at this and he feels sick.

It's because of him. They're doing this shit because of _him_.

He turns, best he can with Beth propped against his side, and Rick is standing there, poised and frozen as if something has caught him in mid-stride - which something appears to have done. He's looking toward a doorway at the far end of the room where the wall is partially transparent, and through it he can see a seething mass of people.

Rick's lips move. Murmuring something. Unhelpful. Daryl takes a step toward him, leans, shouts. A little closer to Rick’s ear than is strictly necessary.

“ _What?_ ”

Rick snaps his head around, grimacing, all dark realization. “They can't get out.” He jerks his head toward the door and the crowd of people. It's not one mass, Daryl now discerns, but two, two trying to split off and unable to do so. “The doors. They can't- _Shit_.”

He's moving again, but Daryl’s free arm whips out, hand clamping around Rick’s upper arm, and Rick’s wince is audible.

Whatever. He might apologize later. Assuming there even is a later.

“There any other exits?”

“There's the basement, but that's no good. It's where all this shit came from.”

Okay. Fine. Processed. He raises his head, rapidly scans the room and puts more conscious attention into it than he did before. No other doors that he can see. But there are windows, and he missed them before because they're thin slits in two of the four main walls, the glass mostly reflective. Almost mirrored.

Too thin for most average people to pass through. Still, though.

“What about them?”

Rick shakes his head. “Glass is blast-proof. You couldn't bust it with a damn grenade.”

_Fuck it._ No more thinking. Thinking is not working out well for him. So far he's had his best results when he doesn't think at all. He drags Beth past Rick and toward the crowd. “Alright. C’mon.”

It's not exactly like he's leading, though. Beth is almost no real anchor on him, and she's still taking a lot of her own weight, but Rick is pressing ahead, almost at a jog, and Daryl is inclined to let him go. Even if he's not thinking, there's a fuck of a lot here that he doesn't understand even a little, and if Rick is moving with purpose, that's enough.

But then Rick stops at the back of the crowd, pushing up on his feet, calling. His voice is surprisingly penetrative. “What the fuck’s going on?”

A tall, powerful man in front of him turns, along with a few others who are supporting people bleeding from the eyes. “Rick? Thank Christ.” He reaches for Rick, pulls him into a quick but heavy embrace, releases him. “Seems like all exits are locked from the outside. Sealed. No one’s gotten through far as I know.”

“ _Sealed,_ ” Rick repeats, quietly enough that Daryl only discerns the word from the shape his lips make. He's staring blankly at the man, through the man, and for once, Daryl feels only a kind of thin sympathy for him. He knows what it's like, thinking you have a way out, a mode of escape, until you discover that _they've_ discovered it and they've taken it away from you. Simply because they can.

“No one has any fuckin’ idea what's goin’ on. But people in the front are gettin’ crushed. I can't find the Captain, or anyone else. That shit in the air-” He gestures toward the stairs. “-it came up the stairwell. Happened fast. People closest…” He shakes his head, mouth tight. “What d’you reckon, terrorism?”

“Who the hell knows.” Rick glances at at Daryl and the glance is pointed, and at that moment the man seems to see Daryl for the first time. His brow knots into a deep furrow and his hand flies to his sidearm. “The fuck’s _he_ doin’ out of a cell?”

“Ain't got time to explain.” Rick presses a hand to the front of the man’s shoulder, just above his chest, and his face is set - though behind those cool eyes lurks frantic exasperation. It's a pose. Daryl can actually respect that, just a bit. “Look, Shane, I need…” And all at once he falters, and Daryl realizes that he actually doesn't have a plan. Possibly he thought he did. Perhaps he trusted that when he got up here, he would think of one. Find his _Captain,_ perhaps take his instruction from her. But he's standing alone in the middle of what plausibly appears to be a terrorist attack, with a bleeding _half-cop_ and a man stuffed with augs who's wanted for murder, and he has no plan.

Oh for fuck’s sake.

Once again the buzz surges, swells to fill everything around him. _Don't think. Don't think. Just do. You already know what to do, so just fucking do it already._

“Get ‘em outta my way,” his hisses. Both Rick and Shane turn twin gazes on him painted with a mixture of surprise and deep skepticism, but he doesn't give a shit. He gives a shit about _staying alive._

Staying free.

“For what?” Shane releases an incredulous laugh, edged with scorn. “You wanna get crushed to death so you don't have to bleed out through the eyes? You that stu-”

Daryl blinks and his free hand is curled in the front fold of Shane’s uniform, knuckles pale, just about lifting the asshole off his feet. Up to the tippy-toes. It's hard not to smile, so he doesn't deny himself. He's not sure where this new trick came from, but he's going to enjoy it while he has it.

The buzz in his head is almost unbearable. Insistent. Urgent. Burning through his muscles, nerves slender laces of fire. Feels like it must be leaking out into the air to do battle with the sickness hissing through its molecules. It wants him to _do something_ with it. Or it'll burst his head wide open.

When he speaks, he speaks very slow. Very deliberate. Somehow, he's loud without being loud at all.

“Get. Them. Outta. My. Way.” He pauses a beat, leans in and adds, “‘less you want ‘em all to die.”

Shane glares at him, jaw working, hand curled around Daryl’s wrist and doing his own squeezing - and of course it doesn't hurt. Not that wrist. He's not sure what's under the skin of that wrist, but it's not something that feels pain in any conventional way. A response; probably should. He lifts higher, dangling Shane from his own shirt, and as Shane’s lips peel back from his teeth in a snarl, Rick slaps a hand against his shoulder.

“Think we should do what he says. Anything else worked so far? Shane, people are _dying_.” As Daryl shifts closer, Rick appears to take the hint, pulling Beth into a half embrace as Daryl hands her over. He shakes himself slightly, sets himself forward toward what he gathers is one of the halls that leads to an exist, braces his feet against the floor. Like something specific. He remembers. Seen it in the stream. Big fucking deal every four years.

Doesn't matter. He can fucking run. Rick and Shane raise their voices and shout at people to _move aside, make a path, someone’s coming,_ no explanation of why but scared and bewildered and too many bleeding people are turning to see what’s going on as he charges through them like a bull - he remembers what a bull is, mean motherfucker with horns and likes to toss people around on them - carving a path with brute force. The hall narrows ahead, makes a slight right turn, but he can see the blinking red EXIT sign, and an arrow. And then he's barreling around the corner and there’s the door, visible through a solid mass of people denser than any he's pushed through before, and the buzz consumes him and that's when he starts gripping them by the arms and simply _hurling_ them backward over the heads of the others, clearing out the way ahead in the most literal way possible. Door now, heavy, dark metal, just enough of a gap there to get his body up against it. The ones on either side are spinning awkwardly around to gape at him as he slams in between them, arms in front of him and fists locked, and the buzz-roar strangles in on itself and explodes.

He's stumbling out into a dim, grimy alleyway, the wail of sirens and the scuffle of rats through the dumpsters, lights of towers like stars far above them. And the freshest, sweetest air he ever tasted.

Except no. No, this air takes second place to that first running breath of life.

It's close, though.

Through and behind the inexpressible pleasure of that air, he's aware of being shoved and buffeted as people cascade through the door behind him like water through a widening break in a levy, coughing, holding onto each other, staggering and calling to people behind them to hurry. He's being pushed forward, Beth still clutched against his side - if he drops her now she'll get fucking trampled to death, Jesus - and Rick in the periphery of his vision but rapidly herded away from him by the sheer force of the flood of people. It can't be _that_ many, he didn't think he saw that many on his way in, but now it feels like ten thousand spilling into the night, threatening to drown him.

Alone in the cramped dark, hurting, shivering, curled on his cot. So long without seeing more than a few people at a time. Forgot there were so many people in the world. Forgot the world was so big.

Flash of lights at the end of the alley where everyone is heading - ambulances? Does anyone else know what happened? Someone should have been able to make some calls. Someone else should have come for them. It doesn't make sense. He's not sure what qualifies as sense anyway. The roar in his head is subsiding back into a buzz, but the buzz is confused. He was holding Beth up but that's changing. He's faltering, finding a patch of shelter against a dumpster and leaning on the greasy metal edge.

He's remembering. This happened before. This - explosion in his head and his muscles and his nerves and then the satisfaction of impact, something crumbling to rubble, and then his body sagged, fleshy deflating balloon, and they dragged him back into the darkness.

It can't happen now. He's not safe yet. Long as he's within miles of this place, he's not safe.

But he can't exactly run like this.

She's maneuvering herself out from under his arm, stepping away from him. He glances at her, fighting waves of blurriness; she might still be bleeding freely but he's not certain of that, and she's pulling up her shirt to wipe off her face. Her hands are shaking, she's shaking, but though she's leaning against the wall at his side, she's not crumpling. Doesn't seem inclined to crumple.

She's breathing the same full breaths as him. Rough in her throat, but not rattling.

He squints, manages to focus on her. The blood she wipes away from her nose and eyes is replacing itself, but it appears to do so only in a slow ooze. She inhales. Coughs. Inhales again and doesn't cough at all.

The crowd is thinning out. The sirens are much louder. More shouting, sounds like what he gathers is the front of the building. A shape draws up beside him, halts, and a hand on his shoulder makes him cringe inward.

Ragged voice: “You need help?”

“No.” Her. He swings his head around to stare at her, nonplussed. Yes, she needs help. Not so much him, he needs to _get the fuck away from here_ as soon as possible, but her, absolutely. But she's wiping her face again and shaking her head, and she sounds very confident in her assessment. “We’re alright. Just need some air.” She gestures at the mouth of the alley, at the lights. “Go. We’ll be fine.”

Doubtful noise. He catches a glimpse of a young, doubtful, male face. Then the young doubtful male face is gone and he's turning on Beth, continuing to use the edge of the dumpster for support but summoning up all the _what the shit_ energy he can.

“The fuck’re you doin’?”

“I'm not just leavin’ you here.” Her voice is quivering but he gets the distinct sense that the quiver is only surface. It's not quiver all the way down. “I said, I’m alright.”

“Your goddamn _eyes_ was bleedin’.”

“And they're not now.” She stop and reaches up, wipes at them, examines her fingers with pursed lips. “Or not as much. My chest is feelin’ better. I don't think I'm gonna drop dead right here, and I'm not leavin’ you, so stop tryin’ to make me.”

This is infuriating. She was crazy enough to help him; apparently the crazy doesn't stop at that. He leans in and hisses. “You got no idea what the fuck that shit was. You go no idea what it could still be doin’ to you.”

“Do _you?_ ”

He glares at her in silence. No. No, he doesn't. He has some nasty fucking ideas but none of them are anything he can be sure of. More of those fragments of memory, things he can feel himself reaching for and things he knows he doesn't _want_ to remember, things that burn in his diaphragm and crawl up through his chest.

Burn. But his chest isn't burning. None of him is burning. He's just so fucking _tired,_ and the world is beginning to spin in gentle little twirls, lights smearing across the top of his vision.

If this was them, and they wanted him alive, they would probably use something that wouldn't hurt him. Somehow.

He wrestles his vision back into focus and peers at her from beneath his hair, studies her in the low and uneven light. They could have used something that spread faster, killed instantly. They didn't. Rick hadn't even looked sick - not yet. Shane hadn't looked sick. And Beth does look better. And someone pulled the fire alarm.

Either they were doing something he doesn't understand… or something went wrong. Someone fucked up.

“You almost died,” he says slowly. “All you almost died. People _did_ die. You gotta go.”

“Somethin’s wrong with you.”

He snorts. This is slightly ironic. “I'll be alright.”

“ _I'm not leavin’ you_.”

The fierceness in her voice makes him start, almost reels him back. He just about carried her out of there, this small slender blond girl, and not only is she not afraid of him, but she's giving him every indication that he would have to physically force her to get her to do as he says.

And she's right. Something is wrong with him. His knees are wobbling and how long he can keep them under him is an open question, and his vision is less and less reliable every second.

But he doesn't get it. “Why?”

“Because I left _her,_ ” she whispers hoarsely, and suddenly tears are glistening in her eyes, and he doesn't think it's irritation from whatever she was breathing. “I left _them_. I could've helped and I didn't. I left them. I'm not doin’ that again.” She swallows, inhales deeply, and seems to stand more upright, shoulders squared. “Let me at least help you get away from here.”

He looks at her for a long moment. Then he can't anymore; his eyes flutter closed, and he drops his head. Releases a grim, unsteady laugh. He _feels_ grim and unsteady. He feels as crazy as she appears to be. This is a dream. He’ll wake up on his cot in the cold dark, and they'll come for him and drag him out and it'll start all over again.

“Alright,” he says softly. Ducks his head. Maybe, once he's feeling stronger, he can shake her off. “You wanna get yourself killed, you go right the fuck ahead.”

“Thanks. I'm gonna.” The quiver is mostly gone. She sides her shoulder under his arm and lifts; a grunt escapes her when he leans on her but she doesn't fall. “C’mon.”

And the truth is, he thinks as he stumbles with her toward the other end of the alley, that he's glad of this. Whatever else is going wrong here, whatever this crazy fucking girl is getting herself willfully into, he's not alone.

Finally, at least for a little while, he's not alone.


	5. I came here the hard way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Daryl and fleeing the scene of a shockingly large crime, Beth struggles to figure out what to do next. But her own ethics have seriously limited her options, and really what it comes down to is realizing just how little she has left to lose. And she might yet have a very necessary ally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This thing is scaring me a little less than it was. Which is good, because it means I might be able to update slightly more often. Though I'm still juggling multiple WIPs, so we'll see. 
> 
> And those of you spotting more Howl parallels: I didn't intend them, but it's kind of fun that they're there. If nothing else I'm being derivative of myself. Also, Rick is taking on a significantly bigger role in this than I foresaw, and it's fun.
> 
> Happy New Year. ❤️

There came a point - she has no idea where, only that she's past it now and is on the other side of whatever border it marked - after which she completely stopped questioning her own sanity. Possibly somewhere around the time she started bleeding from the eyes. Possibly some time after that. She's not bleeding anymore, at any rate, and with every breath her chest feels clearer and looser, though God knows the air quality at ground level in Atlanta leaves a lot to be desired. She's alive, the station and the sirens and the flashing lights and raised voices are receding behind them, and Daryl is managing to walk upright without staggering more than could be plausibly excused with intoxication. She's got blood on the front of her uniform, but not an alarming amount. Aside from Daryl’s sock-feet and weird clothes, there's nothing overtly weird about him - no weirder than your average street bum.

He could actually pass for one of those.

There's a lot to freak out about here. But it wouldn't accomplish anything, giving in to that impulse. Wouldn't give her any sense of direction. Wouldn't make what happened back there any less horrible. Wouldn't undo any of what she's done.

She has to focus on what's in front of her. Do that, or all of it slips away and she very likely never gets it back.

The street they're walking down is considerably narrower and less heavily traveled than the one everyone else had exited toward, the one the front of the station faces. It's not another alley by any means, but she doesn't feel the kind of exposure that would plant a new seed of panic in her chest. Foot traffic is light enough at this time of night to protect them from close scrutiny but heavy enough that they don't stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

 _This time of night._ God. It must be well after midnight. She doesn't feel tired, but that's almost certainly because she's too locked into fight-or-flight to do so.

Daryl… Daryl is tired. Daryl is far more tired than she would have expected, given everything else. They're a few blocks away now and in fact it seems to be getting slightly better as they go - she's no longer supporting him the way she was, though he's still leaning against her now and then - but in the alley by the dumpster there were a few seconds where she was half certain he was simply going to collapse.

There are no rules for this. There's nothing to go on, nothing on which to base any expectations. She's so far out in the water that all sign of land was gone a while ago.

She shoots him a glance. His gait is heavy in addition to unsteady, dragging, and she keeps having to slow hers to match it. She's always been a fast walker anyway, but even so. “You need to talk to me.”

He glares at her sidelong, jaw tight. She didn't expect him to take that well. Too bad. “Yeah? About?”

“You _know_ what about. About everythin’. Who are you? _What_ are you? What just happened? You're not cuffed to a table anymore,” she adds. “Far as I'm concerned you're not under arrest, either. Just _tell_ me.”

Grunt. He stumbles over a crack in the pavement; she halts, catches his upper arm to help right him - and before he tugs roughly away she feels how clearly and obviously it is _not_ a normal arm, not normal muscle. It's not unyielding, but it's hard in the way even profoundly sculpted muscle isn't, and she doesn't think she's imagining the seams that run through it just beneath the surface of his skin.

“Ain't gotta tell you shit, girl.”

She sighs. “I can't make you. But I saved your ass. Best case scenario, I lost my job forever. Worst case, I landed myself some prison time. You owe me.”

He’s silent again for a time, sullen, and she lets it be. She can feel him cracking, as if those seams run deeper than his muscles, and as they reach an overpass and slip into greasy shadows, he stops and turns to her, and as she does the same, she's _positive_ she's not imagining the literal red-gold glow she sees in the heart of his pupils.

“You want me to tell you shit I don't know.”

She crosses her arms. Stands her ground. “What shit don't you know?”

“Jesus.” He barks a hard laugh, looks away down the short tunnel to the street beyond, the hiss of the passing groundcars. “I don't…” He closes his eyes briefly, and while she can barely make out his face in the shadows, she spots the pain that flickers across it. “I was in the dark,” he breathes. “I don't even know how long. They _did shit_ to me, fucked me up, and I ain't ever goin’ back. Alright?”

“The station, whatever it was in the air. That was them?” One of the corps? It was what she would have assumed a few hours ago, but now… She exhales sharply. “Who would _do_ that?”

“I dunno. I never knew who they were. I hardly even remember it. But they want me back.” Another flicker of his eyes. She fights back a shiver. It's easy to forget right now - far too easy - precisely how much danger he might still present. “They were ready to kill everyone to make that happen.”

Yes. Seen from a skewed angle, it makes an awful kind of sense. Do it with something in the air - a gas, a nerve agent - and then send people in to get him once everyone else was dead. Nuts, but if these people are this confident that they'll escape the consequences… But it seems like such overkill. Literally.

Yet she breathed the stuff and she’s alive now. She doesn't even feel that bad. She feels better than he looks, anyway, and that raises a whole host of new questions, with none of the answers forthcoming.

She swipes her hands over her face. “What’re you gonna do now?”

He's silent. Something about the way he's standing tugs at her and she takes a step toward him, and when the headlights of a car sweep past, she sees that he's propped himself against the graffitied concrete wall and he's trembling at the edges.

She was wrong about him being better. He's only been covering. It's taking everything he's got to keep himself on his feet.

He sighs, lowers his head until his hair obscures what little of his face she can see. “I'm gonna get as far away from here as I can.”

“You're not gonna do that like you are. Daryl.” She touches his shoulder, and this time he doesn't flinch. “Somethin’s _wrong_ with you.”

“Just need a second.”

He's lying. He's a bad liar. Even if he wasn't, she suspects he couldn't hide this from her, the way he's struggling. And she could consider her debt to the dead paid and leave him here, toss some cash at him, maybe call him a cab. But Beth Greene was raised on Bible study and Sunday School, and one of her favorites of Christ’s parables - she was never sure why - was the story of the Good Samaritan. Except she does actually understand some of what she found so attractive. The radical kindness, ruthless somehow. The strength of it, strength that not everyone would know when they saw it.

She can't abandon him. Not exhausted in the darkness of an underpass in the middle of the night, with no shoes and - so he claims - next to no memory. He's apparently being hunted by people who are perfectly willing to kill to get him back, but they likely don't know that he's with her. Or not yet. She doesn't think she would be anyone’s first guess as someone to aid and abet a murderer, much less one with black market augs.

And she very much doubts that Rick is going to say anything to anyone. Not unless he wants to be even more screwed than she is.

Everything is in confusion right now. Might as well take advantage. And she's already in this deep.

She pushes her sleeve back, touches the band at her wrist. It flicks to bright life. “You're gonna come with me.”

He blinks at her. Says nothing.

She gives him a faint smile as she opens an app and shares her location with it. “C’mon. If nothin’ else, you can let me get you some shoes.”

~

The interior of the cab - self-driving, of course; you hardly ever see the manually operated ones anymore - is naturally being visually monitored and recorded, but something she learned in a course on media and evidence gathering is that most of the cameras in cabs are cheap as hell and notoriously unreliable. The light is low, and provided Daryl keeps his head down - which he's doing anyway, half slumped in the seat - he should be difficult to recognize. She doesn't try to talk to him. Some cabs come complete with audio surveillance and some don't, and though the one she's snagged clearly isn't new - a couple of frayed rips in the upholstery and the odor of sweat and stale alcohol settled into every porous surface - it's safer to assume that anyone who can watch them can listen as well.

But even if she's not talking to him, she's studying him. Even in the low light, the streaks of dancing color as they pass adscreens and neon-lit doorways, she takes in what she can see. His shallow breathing, that persistent tremble at his edges, and she thinks about the fear she saw in the interrogation room - the utter bone-cracking terror.

Of someone who tried to murder a station full of people in order - almost definitely - to recover him alive.

She sighs and turns her attention out the window, drifts into the quiet hum of the hydro engine. All at once she wishes so much that she could tumble into sleep right here and now. Just for a few hours. Even her most complicated and bizarre dreams have always been simpler than this.

_And when you wake up? What then?_

_What exactly is your long-term plan here?_

The voice sounds vaguely like Rick’s. She grits her teeth. That's another massive and massively worrying unknown, and yet another one that she can't immediately do anything about.

“Screw you,” she whispers fiercely - maybe to pseudo-Rick, maybe to someone else - and Daryl lifts his head slightly, that eerie glow visible once more as he peers at her.

“Huh?”

“Nothin’.” She looks away again. What she can immediately do something about is herself. She can keep her shit together until she knows what her next move is.

Aside from getting him some shoes. And maybe some clothes that make him look a little less like that escaped mental patient she suspected he might be.

She pushes herself upright as the cab slows and the interior lights flick on. At least now she can take a breath. “Get out. We’re here.”

~

The part of Atlanta in which, as of a little over a week ago, Beth makes her home - north of downtown and not too far from the old Botanical Gardens - isn't exactly the nicest neighborhood in town, but neither is it anywhere near the worst she's seen. Like a lot of the more formerly suburban-ish areas, the large single-family homes and stately bungalows have been razed to the ground - casualties of Atlanta’s sudden expansion as people streamed north out of a Florida increasingly underwater - and the yards were paved over and the big trees cut down, with utilitarian high-rise apartment buildings erected in their place. The days of the bungalows and the yards were long before her time and it's been like this for as long as she can remember, but she's seen pictures of what it used to be, and it made her sad in a way she found difficult to shake. She blamed it on being a farm girl in a time when non-corporate farms themselves are on the rapid decline, tried to brush it off, but every time she stands on the sidewalk and looks up at the long block of poorly maintained glass-and-concrete rectangles, an echo of the melancholy returns.

No time for that now. It's a luxury she can’t afford.

She's out of the cab and on the sidewalk, about to head for the door, when she glances back in time to see Daryl nearly falling as he climbs out after her, and without thinking she lunges back in two short strides, shoulder under his arm. He grunts and tries to shake her off but she persists, practically hauling him out and onto the pavement, the cab murmuring _thank you and have a pleasant evening_ in a bored AI monotone.

He's significantly bigger than she is. But whether it's adrenaline or sheer determination, that fact isn't presenting much of an issue for her.

Can't be adrenaline. She was out of that a while ago.

“Lay off,” he mutters, shrugging at her again, but she ignores him, leading him through up the low steps to the thick glass doors and leaning over to press her hand to the entry pad. One of the doors hisses open, the dim light of the small lobby spilling out to greet them, no longer blocked by the tinted panels, and together they stumble inside.

The lobby is spare, a wallscreen displaying garishly saturated beach scenes and a couple of fake plants the only real features aside from the long row of mailboxes, and she's always found it even more depressing than the exterior, but aside from the cheapness of the place, it has an additional benefit that she's only appreciating now: most of the occupants are older and working steady day jobs, and when they go to bed they stay there. There's no security on duty - the block isn't nearly upscale enough - and no one else in view.

If anyone saw them, she supposes once again that she could try to pass him off as a drunk friend. It's an iffy plan, but it's better than nothing.

Hopefully she won't have to test it. She directs him to the left and toward the elevators.

As she punches the _up_ button and leans him against the wall, he lifts his head and regards her with a mixture of bemusement and outright confusion. “You takin’ me to _your place?_ ”

“Where else am I supposed to take you?” She sounds more irritable than she means to. She also doesn't care. Being _nice_ to him was never on the table before and it sure as hell isn't now.

“‘s not safe,” he says, quieter, and as the elevator makes a soft _ding_ and the doors roll open, she looks at him and falters. She knows he doesn't mean it's not safe for him. He wouldn't be safe anywhere.

It's her he's worried for.

She takes his arm, pulls him into the car. “I'm betting they don't know I got you out.”

“That a bet you really wanna make?” He coughs a laugh. “You like those odds?”

“I don't have anywhere else to take you,” she repeats, but fresh disquiet is creeping through her. Yes, everything back there was enormously confused, and yes, if _they_ meant for everyone in that station to die they're going to have a difficult time managing the fact that most of the people who are supposed to be dead are very much alive - these shadowy individuals might in fact get taken care of by an extremely pissed off police force without any more problems, though she sincerely doubts it’ll be that easy - but it's a bet. She doesn't know. She can't be confident that they won't find her. That they won't find _him_. That they don't have any number of ways of quite literally tracking him.

That they don't know where he is right this second.

Well. She's here. The elevator _dings_ again and she walks him out into the corridor - also mercifully deserted, and silent except for the muffled sound of a show on someone's stream. Nothing to do about it now, because she's not dragging him back down and into another cab, and abandoning him stopped being an option a long time ago.

“Don't gotta be doin’ this at all,” he mutters, as if reading her mind, which is annoying.

She sighs. “Shut up.” A few more seconds and they're in front of her door, and she's keying in the code, shoving it open and pushing him inside.

The overhead lights are motion-sensitive, and they flick on automatically. She doesn't like them - has always found that light has an oddly intense effect on her mood - but hasn't yet bothered to deactivate them, and now she's glad of it. Because the cramped living room/dining nook beyond is full of boxes in various states of being unpacked, her newly purchased futon not yet fully assembled, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to fall over something and hurt them both worse than they're hurt already.

Instead she maneuvers them around the boxes, around the slats of the futon and toward where the cushion is spread out on the pitted wooden floor. She _has_ a bedroom, has a bed in it and everything, but now she's glad she unpacked the cushion before she was done assembling this damn thing, because she doesn't much want to toss him onto her bed and she doesn't want to go the extra way anyhow.

Not that she could toss him. She doesn't. She releases him and he crumples, drops onto his back and lets out a huge breath, eyes closed.

He's pale. Then again, he was pale before. She brushes her hair back from her face and gazes down at him, words echoing in her mind.

_I was in the dark. I don't even know how long._

“I'll get you some water,” she says quietly, and goes to the little galley kitchen for it.

When she returns he's sitting up, though his shoulders are slumped and his hair is hanging in his face, and he raises his head as she approaches. He takes the cup when she hands it to him and drains it in a couple enormous gulps, coughing when he lowers it and wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. She lowers herself into a crouch and watches him, her eyes level with his, and he looks back at her, his face unreadable.

For a moment, silence. The sound of the TV has disappeared. Outside a siren warbles and whirling lights swell, and her chest tightens for a second or two, but both die away as the cruiser passes.

If her _colleagues_ were after her, they would already be here.

She rocks back to sit and folds her knees against her chest, her lip trapped between her teeth as she studies him. “You feelin’ better?”

He gives her a duck of the head that she takes as a nod. Says nothing.

“What happened to you?” She pauses, thinking back. “It was right after you broke the door down. Wasn't it?”

He doesn't answer. But he stares down at his forearm - his left arm, the one she gathers is probably more organic than his right, and for the first time she notices a tiny circular bruise inside and near the crook of his elbow, lighter purple around a darker purple-blue dot like a mark made with the tip of a pen.

“She stuck me with somethin’,” he murmurs, low enough that she doubts he's talking to her.

“Who did?”

He doesn't look up, and when he speaks it's still low, though clearly meant for her ears this time. “Sherry.”

She frowns, feeling distinctly that she's both getting somewhere with him and even more lost than she was before. “Who’s Sherry?”

“She was there. At the… the place. I dunno.” He shakes his head. His eyes are unfocused, distant, the empty cup now loose in his hand. All of him seems loose - _released_ somehow. “She helped me get out. She had a needle. I dunno what was in it, but after… This shit, I didn't know. I didn't know what I could do.” He trails off again, lets the cup roll out of his grip as he lays a fingertip over the injection point. What he says is too soft for her to make out with any clarity, but she knows what it sounds like, and she's sure of it.

_It's waking me up._

She shivers, and she's not certain why.

“You should rest,” she says after another beat or two of silence, and her mouth stretches into something between a grimace and a smile. “ _I_ should rest.”

He focuses on her again, brow furrowed. “You still alright?”

She nods. She is. She still doesn't understand it, either, and part of her regards it as just about miraculous, but the only burn in her chest is residual, the air flowing easily, and at worst the back of her throat feels scratchy, as if she's getting over a cold. She glances down, freshly aware of the blood staining her front.

It's not a mystery she's going to get any closer to solving tonight.

“I'm just tired. I'll get you a blanket.” She pushes to her feet, groaning softly as her legs and back twinge. Not even twenty and her body is complaining. Though again, God knows what the agent in the air has actually done to her.

Hell, she might wake up dead.

She heads to the short hallway that leads to the bedroom, to the linen closet there, pulling an old blanket from home off the shelf and carrying it back to him. He takes it when she offers it, looks down at it, up at her.

She jerks her head in the direction of the hallway. “I'm gonna sleep a few hours. Bathroom is there if you need it. On the right. Go ahead and grab whatever you want from the fridge. Not that there's a whole lot, but yeah.”

Nod. “What're you gonna do tomorrow?”

“I dunno yet. Get you some better clothes. Get you outta the city.” She rolls a shoulder. Planning on this order has never been her strong suit, and she's perfectly aware of it. Some basic goals seem apparent and for now that's enough.

He huffs a breath, says nothing else. She regards him for another second or two, then turns. She's not even close to being done with her questions, but at the moment she doesn't think she has the energy for any further interrogation, and she doubts he does either. Assuming she _is_ still alive in a few hours, she can see about it then.

Like she told him, he owes her. Even if he did save her life.

And the lives of the vast majority of the people in that station.

She's most of the way to the bedroom door when he speaks once more and stops her in her tracks. One word, gruff, but sincere. He doesn't strike her as the kind of man who bothers with pretense.

“Thanks.”

She casts a look over her shoulder, gives him a weary little smile. “No problem.”

It _is_ a problem. It's a significant problem. It's a problem the size and scope of which she senses she doesn't yet know. But it's a choice she made. A bed. She has to lie in it.

Literally, now.

She makes a detour into the bathroom, washes the last of the blood off her face and neck and out of the ends of her hair, rinses it out of her mouth. She barely lingers long enough to see herself in the mirror; it's not pretty, though it's not as bad as she was fearing. She appears vaguely like she's been through a war zone.

Well, she kind of has.

Into the bedroom, shutting the door softly behind her. She can hear him in the living room, a nearly inaudible rustling, creak of floorboards and what sounds like bare feet moving slowly toward the kitchen. Walking on his own; good. The fridge door opens, shuts. Not much in there indeed, but an apple or two and enough sliced turkey - vat-grown, not farm-raised, and you're not supposed to be able to taste a difference but she totally can - to make himself some species of sandwich if he wants.

She wonders when he last ate. What exactly they were even feeding him.

Probably not three-course gourmet dinners.

She moves toward the bed, tugging her hair out of its ponytail, pulling off her bloody shirt and leaving it in a heap on the floor behind her, kicking off her boots, undoing her belt and shimmying off her uniform pants. It's a relief to be out of them, like shedding an ill-fitting skin, and she collapses onto the narrow mattress in only her bra and panties, rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling.

Another cruiser warbles past, sweeping its whirling colored lights across the room. Once again she tenses slightly, then relaxes when it's gone.

They _will_ be looking for her. The cops. Her fellow employees of the City of Atlanta Security force. They'll want to debrief her, for no other reason than that she was _there_. She never in her life expected to regard that with trepidation, but now she realizes something else, something she wants to slap herself for not understanding the enormity of before.

They'll be reviewing the station’s surveillance footage. They'll have to. She'll be on it. She’ll be all over it. Just about everything she did. Even if Rick keeps his mouth shut and risks his career to cover for her - and in fact he can probably spin things in order to cover his own ass so she has no reason to assume he will, no matter what a good guy he is - that's going to be nigh on impossible to explain away.

She's fucked. Sooner or later, she's completely fucked.

She heaves a breath and slings an arm across her eyes. She probably still has time to get him out. When she wakes up, as soon as she can. If she's quick it shouldn't be that hard. Like she was thinking before. Get another cab. Give him some clothes and some cash, send him on his way, then face the music and sing along.

It's no surprise to her that she doesn't feel even remotely guilty.

 _Then you know you made the right decision, Bethy,_ her father murmurs.  _You know it wasn't a mistake, whatever happens now._

Selling him out to save herself, even if it would work… No. No, that's not an option any more than abandoning him. Never was. Not for her. She didn't get into this line of work to become the kind of person who does that. She's going to have a lot to own up to her family for, but somehow she's positive that what she's done here will be easier to defend to them than what she _might_ do, if she _was_ that kind of person.

She's going to help him. She's going to see this through, because if her intuition is correct, she has nothing much else to lose at this point. And if the people who imprisoned him then and are chasing him now really did try to kill an entire CAS station full of officers and civilians…

_They don't get to have him. They don't get to win._

She's satisfied with that.

Eventually she sleeps.

~

A gentle buzzing at her wrist awakens her into thin dawn light. She's on her stomach with the sheet tangled around her legs, her arm folded awkwardly under her and almost entirely numb. She blinks, bleary-eyed, scrubs at her face and peers at the little screen, the name attached to the incoming call.

She's conscious enough for her gut to first tighten and then sink.

Hell. She already knew it was coming. She manages to move her other arm enough to tap the tiny green _receive_ point, clearing her throat and hoping she doesn't sound as groggy as she feels. Not that it especially matters.

“Rick?”

“ _You're not dead. Great._ ” His tone is cool, brisk. Not in a mood to waste time. She can respect that. “ _We gotta meet, and we gotta do it right now_.”

This is _not_ what she expected. She lifts her head, frowning in confusion. Maybe she's not hearing him right. What he said didn't sound exactly like _Come to the nearest station and turn yourself in if you know what's good for you._

“Huh?”

“ _You heard me._ Now, _Beth. They're starting to sort this mess out, and unless you want to be up shit creek with no chance in_ hell _of a paddle, we need to talk_.” Pause. She struggles to process. “ _I can help you. If_ he's _still with you, I might be able to help him too. No idea why I'd even want to, but if that gets you moving faster. Alright?_ ”

“Alright,” she murmurs, pushing herself up. Yes, very all right. And this might be a trap, not that she can imagine why they would even bother, but if it isn't… “What should I-”

“Is _he still with you?_ ”

“Yeah. We’re at-”

“ _Stop. If I don't know, it's one less thing to lie about._ ” He pauses again, and she hears rustling in the background. A buzz that might be traffic. “ _You know the deli six blocks south of the station?_ ”

“I- Yeah. Yeah, I know it.” Good ham and cheese subs. All at once she's aware of how ravenously hungry she is.

“ _Good. Meet me there in fifteen_.”

Fifteen. Tight, but she can do it. She's already on her feet, moving to the closet to rummage for clothes. “What should I do with him?”

“ _Wherever you've got him, if you think it's secure, leave him there. Even if you think it might not be. Tell him to keep outta sight. Got it?_ ”

“Got it. Rick-”

But he's gone, leaving only the dead silence of the open line.

She gazes down at her wrist for a few more seconds, utterly bemused, then shifts her attention back to the task of dressing. Her stomach is leaping, jittery consciousness permeating her. She fully expected to be in this on her own. She sure as hell never expected anyone else to be going to bat for her beyond what happened in the chaos of the night before. But apparently she underestimated Rick, and this isn't the first time.

She should work on not doing that anymore.

She yanks a plain gray tee over her head, wriggles into a semi-clean pair of jeans, and makes her way toward the bedroom door with awkward hops as she pulls her boots on - not her polished uniform boots but the battered pair of cowboy boots that serve as basically her only other shoes.

As she straightens and steps out into the hall, gathering her hair back into its messy ponytail, she's smiling. This is all still going to be difficult, and likely to the point of impossibility.

But it might also be the smallest bit more possible than it was before.


	6. your concrete heart isn't beating

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Safe for the moment - and alone - Daryl takes some inventory of what happened and what's going on. There's a lot he remembers. There's more he doesn't. And there's plenty in both categories that he would rather not remember at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we're already into the territory of things being longer than I expected, because this entire chapter was meant to be a single little scene. Daryl simply started word-vomiting at me. As he does. 
> 
> And I already did this on both Howl and my blog, so I'm sure you've seen it and I apologize for shoving it in front of your eyes again, but basically: I just renewed the Keep Singing podcast's Soundcloud account and it wasn't super cheap, so if you enjoy it and this and my other fics, and you want to support that work and make it easier for me to do all this stuff, I would appreciate you taking a look at [this quick message](http://dynamicsymmetry.tumblr.com/post/155448631496/quick-note-guys-and-i-hate-feeling-like-npr) just unbelievably much. ❤️❤️❤️
> 
> Thank you. I promise not to do this a lot.

His gaze trails her until he can't see her anymore. Then he sits where he is and stares at the room.

Takes him what feels like a while to realize that this is the first room he's been in for Christ, who the fuck knows how long, where he hasn't been there to some degree against his will. If he walked out of here right now, he's all but certain she wouldn't try to stop him, at least not beyond what she's already done to convince him to stick with her.

And why? What the fuck? What is _wrong_ with this girl? He's going along with her because he perceives himself to be drastically short on options at the moment, but it makes no goddamn _sense,_ and every second he's with her, she's…

She's right. There's something wrong with him. He's less shaky, less dizzy, less ready to collapse to the floor - and yes, it helps that he's already sitting down - but there's something. He needs to know what it is, needs to know _anything_ more than he does, because he's not fool enough to believe it won't happen again, and if it happens at precisely the wrong time, in precisely the wrong place, he's fucked.

He can't afford a weakness like that. Lurking, half unknown, ready to reappear any second.

Thing is… He spends another moment or two studying the injection point on his arm. That needle and whatever was in it, shining clear in the nearly blinding light. He remembers times when his body did what it can apparently do now, sure. Plenty of them. Not all of them are all that clear, but there's enough. They did shit to him, strapped him down and drugged him and stuck him full of their own needles, _cut into him,_ and then - hours or days or weeks later - they made him do things. They made him do things very much like what he's just done, and they watched and measured and tested over and over and fucking _over_. But when they were through with him, when they no longer wanted whatever they had made him capable of, the ability to do whatever it was went away, and he doesn't remember anything like the collar Rick snapped around his neck. If they shut those parts of him off - put them to sleep - they did it some other way.

Then Sherry and her needle, and now he's waking up. All of him.

Fuck knows what's inside him. He looks down at the torn skin on his arms, the hint of shiny black beneath both. Thinks about what that means. Thinks about what they said about that torn skin, about how it's _heavy carbon-weave,_ whatever that means, except one thing he is pretty certain of is that it should be difficult to tear. His eyes. His spine. How he fell a distance that should have killed him, and he got up with barely a scratch. And as he landed, the flare of light beneath him. He wasn't imagining that. It happened. How back in the station, he was stronger than he ever should have been.

There's a lot he's hazy on, but the limits of what he should be able to do aren't included.

Sherry slipped whatever that shit was into him, and now he can do all of it, and probably things he still hasn’t even discovered. But he broke down that door and it just about laid him out. So okay, extrapolate from there: he can do things, but even now there are limits. He's still _human;_ he pushes himself beyond a certain point, he crashes. That single instance of exertion might have been enough to do it. On the other hand, it could have been building the whole night and only caught up with him then.

Either way. Comes to the same. No way to be positive that's what's going on without further experimentation, but it makes sense. He should operate under that assumption.

He should be careful.

He sighs, swipes his hands down his face. He's abruptly aware that he's starving, remembers what she said about the fridge, and when he tries to push himself up, it's mercifully much easier than he was fearing. When he walks, it's the same. He's a bit slow, a bit unsteady, but he makes it to the tiny kitchen all right, and squints in the glare of the light as he examines the space.

He remembers what a kitchen is supposed to look like. He's not dealing with total amnesia. He remembers the world, even if he's missing a significant number of details. This is a bland stainless steel space, deeply utilitarian, and clean in a way that indicates both mild effort and someone who hasn't lived here for very long. Said she was _half a cop;_ so naturally she hasn't had a chance to be more than that.

Faint smile. Possibly she's new in town. Some welcome, if so.

He can relate.

Counters bare except for a third of a loaf of bread, a roll of paper towels and what he recognizes as an old microwave. The fridge, newer and sleek. He pulls it open and peers inside; not much in the way of options and he doesn't give a fuck. He grabs the first things he sees, which turns out to be a pack of pre-sliced turkey and an apple. Sandwiches are something else he remembers. Nothing fancy; turkey piled on the bread, and he doesn't bother looking for a plate; he stands there, back leaned against the counter, and wolfs it down, follows it with the apple, which he nearly devours whole.

It's the best goddamn food he's ever tasted.

What the fuck did they even _feed_ him in there? Nothing like this. He thinks hard; recalls pale tasteless mush and not a great deal else. Well, sure; he couldn't have been human to them, not with what they were doing to him. They would care about the minimum to keep him at the status they wanted, and stopped there. His enjoyment would never have entered the picture. It never did for anything else.

He licks the salt and sugar off his fingers and comes perilously close to bursting into tears. He shouldn't feel like this. That's something else he knows. He shouldn't feel like this about _food_.

Sherry likely risked a huge amount to help him. Then Beth and Rick, now still Beth, and he has no idea why.

He tosses the apple core into the sink - unsure what else to do with it and he frankly doesn't care right now - and makes his way back into the main room, weaving through the boxes and heading for the bathroom. He turns on the light and barely glances in the mirror. Doesn't care. Takes a piss, splashes water on his face, winces as the cut on his brow stings in protest, feels a little more human.

It's not merely that he doesn't care, is the thing. He doesn't want to know what he looks like. Doesn't want to look into his own eyes and see for himself that they, at least, are not human at all.

Assuming that would be visible.

Back to the main room and the thick cushion on the floor. He sinks into it as he sinks down onto it, and collapses backward with another huge sigh. What does he remember here? Thin mattress, hard surface under it. Blanket, but not much of one. Cold.

It's not difficult to believe that it might have been more than simple neglect, more than refusing to think of him as anything more than a lab animal.

They might have genuinely done these things to him because - for some unknown and unknowable reason - they _wanted_ him to suffer.

A few moments and the lights go out on their own, but even now he's not in the dark, and that's a relief beyond expression. The strange light of the city is streaming in through the wide unshaded window. He turns on his side and blinks, deliberately allowing his eyes to unfocus and those lights to expand into multishaded speckled blurs. They shift and dance, roll over him as cars pass, most of them below but a few in the air. Those glittering towers in the middle distance. The comfort of his head pillowed on his bent arm.

Shit, he almost feels safe. Even though he doubts he ever truly will be. In whatever time he has left.

Only another couple of minutes and he's asleep.

~

He wakes to what he realizes, seconds after, is the sound of Beth exiting her bedroom and coming toward him down the short hall - moving fast, boot heels clacking on the wooden floor. He pushes himself up, peering blearily toward her, morning light striking the side of his face in a way that should be painful and yet is somehow muted. Dulled. Few more seconds and he realizes that the sun is fading and clouds are rolling in, threatening rain.

The sheer novelty of _weather_.

But then he's not focusing on that. It's all on her, disheveled girl clearly dressed in a hurry, reaching back to fumble with her hair. She gives him a quick glance, then bends to one of the stacks of boxes, plucking a light brown jacket carelessly tossed over the top and shrugging it on.

She looks fine. Still tired, a bit red around - and in - the eyes, and her voice is moderately hoarse, but otherwise okay. He feels a rush of relief that he didn't expect and isn't completely comfortable with.

“I gotta go.” She shoots him another look as she zips up. “I got a meetin’. Could be really important. You stay here. Don't poke your head out for anythin’, don't answer the door if it ain't me.”

He blinks at her, vaguely confused - not because what she's saying is in itself confusing but because whatever’s behind it has him totally unmoored. He's becoming aware of the various species of pain twinging through his body, demanding his attention so he can worry properly about them. “How’m I gonna know it's you?”

She points to a small dark panel by the door underset with a couple of smaller touch-panels - viewscreen, he guesses. “One’ll let you see the front door. Other one’ll let you see what's right outside this one. Bottom right panel lets ‘em in. Simple.”

“So you’ll, what, ring the fuckin’ doorbell?”

He catches a glimpse of her eyes rolling. “I live here, Daryl. I can get myself in when I come back. This’ll at least let you see who you're dealin’ with.” She moves swiftly toward the door, giving him a final look over her shoulder. “I'm serious. Alright? I'm not gonna be gone for long. And if pretty much no one knows you're even here, I wanna keep it that way. Once I get back, we’ll figure out what to do next.” She turns toward the door and swings it open, calls back to him: “And I'll bring you some new clothes.”

She's gone. He blinks into the empty stillness, rubbing at his scruffy jaw as his brain wanders in circles, trying to fill out the shape of the place he's now in - new and strange in every meaningful way.

At some point he realizes that he's on his feet and wandering the edges of the room, his tangle of hair pushed back from his face, scanning around with a keen interest he didn't have the energy for last night. One wall is mostly dominated by a single large window clearly in need of cleaning, though it's not grimy. Outside, the clouds are lowering, and droplets of light rain are beginning to patter on the window. He stops here and looks down - at least ten stories or so, he had been too out of it to keep a count when she dragged him in here - and among the light foot traffic on the sidewalk he spots her, tiny blond figure so far below, walking among the wide clear plastic circles of umbrellas and pulling a dark hood over her head before she sets off down the street at a rapid pace, staring down at the phone strapped to her wrist.

A battered groundcar streaked with yellow bands pulls up next to her. The door swings open, and she gets in.

Gone.

He stays where he is for a moment more, hand on the cool glass, watching where she isn't. Then his attention drifts upward, over the passing cars to the building opposite. He's not certain how high the one he's standing in is, but this one is probably about the same height. Tall, though not so tall as the towers in the forest of glass and steel he broke out into. Glass as well, and mirrored, and on that reflection he only sees the mirrored glass that conceals him, and he feels lost in a maze of reflection, abruptly dizzy, more glass when he looks to the left and right.

The bands of high enclosed walkways connecting buildings. People passing through them, moving human-shaped shadows. Here and there a car like the cop cruiser - though not cops at all as far as he can see - rises with a hiss of steam and glides through the air, dipping beneath the skybridges and banking to turn into another invisible elevated lane.

The towers rise with the cars. The further he looks, the taller they get. Glass and steel and concrete all slick silver and bone against the rainy gray sky, lights glowing here and there like candles in the fog. Whirling tubes of color. Glittering screens cover walls with their hues dulled by distance and precipitation. The roads are long strips of slate crisscrossed by swiftly busy lines of gleaming ants, and far away he can see a couple of them swooping upward and curving in a graceful arc, disappearing into hazy obscurity. More aircars like bees zooming through that glistening forest of mirrors. Even the haze is clear. Even the fog and the wet mist are made up of crystalline beads he can almost touch.

So _much_. He grits his teeth, his hands shaking, and he realizes he can practically hear his augmented retinas whir as they focus and unfocus across space, even though he's pretty sure that should be impossible to hear at all. So many things should be impossible, and there's _so much of everything._

With a grunt he shoves himself away from the window and turns his back on it, fixes his gaze on the room. The soft hum of the rain bleeds away into the background of his head.

The room itself is messy, yes. But there's an order to it that emerges the longer he looks at it, the way the boxes have been arranged. A couple labeled KITCHEN not too far from the door. A small screen affixed to one wall not too far from where he passed out, the box beneath it open and full of the parts of what might be some kind of shelf. More unlabeled but open boxes, and inside them he sees weird odds and ends, some functional and some that he has no clue what they might be for - the shade of a table lamp, something pale off-white that looks like it might be the small figure of a woman, old-fashioned frames that no doubt house pictures. Against another wall is a half assembled shelf, and nearby is a box with BOOKS scrawled on the side. He stops there, crouches, and without consideration for whether or not he should be doing this, he splits it open and picks up the first thing he sees. The cover he hardly spares a look for, and lets it fall open to a random page. 

> _Shall I respect man when he condemns me? Let him live with me in the interchange of kindness, and instead of injury I would bestow every benefit upon him with tears of gratitude at his acceptance. But that cannot be; the human senses are insurmountable barriers to our union. Yet mine shall not be the submission of abject slavery. I will revenge my injuries; if I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear, and chiefly towards you my arch-enemy, because my creator, do I swear inextinguishable hatred. Have a care; I will work at your destruction, nor finish until I desolate your heart, so that you shall curse the hour of your birth._

He stares at the book for a moment. The tremor in his hands subsided as soon as he turned from the window, but now it roars back with a vengeance, and he watches it as it intensifies, jitters in his bones - or whatever the hell is there under his skin, whatever they've installed to replace the arm they hacked off him - and then he's lifting the book and gazing down at his skin as it ripples like water, as the seams in it start to crack wider and pull apart, and in a single smooth motion he rises, flings the book across the room, and his arm unfurls in shining black petals and sends a bolt hissing after it.

The book hits the wall at the same instant the bolt pierces it and pins it there, open and spine-up, as if he wanted to mark his place.

All this in the span of time it takes him to blink. Yet he perceives every motion in pristine isolation.

Leaves him there, breathing hard. Snorting, almost, like an angry and confused bull. He shakes his head and looks away. The end of the bolt is vibrating very slightly as the last of the impact shivers out of it.

This home. Not truly _hers_ yet - the unpacked boxes attest to that - but it's hers, and it will be a home. Did he ever have this? Did he ever have anything remotely _like_ this? He squeezes his eyes shut, ducks his head. When he searches through the dim, ragged jumble his brain has become, he gets fragments of things. Hanging canvas flapping in the wind. Trees, trees rising all around. The metallic clapping of a screen door. The reek of stale cigarettes, stale alcohol, garbage in an advanced state of putrefaction. Cracked tile, vomit and piss. Someone yelling, singing untunefully, and a pained yelp. Fire. Darkness. Moving figures on a screen, disintegrating into pixels now and then as the connection to the stream flickered in and out. His cheek against a thin rug, faded flowers right up against his swollen eye. Old things, things so old they might as well be from another world than this. Taste of blood in his mouth. His empty stomach moaning, cold, curled under a blanket with nothing between him and the outside but crackling plastic nailed to the windowframe, and thinking _maybe he won't come in here tonight. Maybe he’ll pass out and leave me be._

Like curled into the sterile dark, his body sobbing quietly to him as it changed and changed beyond his control, hugging himself and thinking _maybe they won't come today. Maybe they'll leave me alone._

_Maybe they'll stop._

His arm is still unfolded into the slick black amalgamation of bars and angles and graceful curves, lowered to his side, another bolt already slotted into place. Slowly, his eyes open, and he stares down at it.

He doesn't feel tired. This alone must not be enough. But of course it's not. Of course it would take much more than this to knock him down.

They designed him better than that.

He sighs - long, strained exhalation - and his arm folds back into itself, pieces clicking into place and the seams closing. There's nothing back there for him. No, he doesn't remember anyplace like this. Nothing he could ever have laid any claim to.

Well. He's here now.

He crosses the room to where the book hangs and pulls the bolt out of its cover, disinterestedly lets the bolt fall to the floor and holds the book in his hands. Different page. Different passage.

> _Do not despair. To be friendless is indeed to be unfortunate, but the hearts of men, when unprejudiced by any obvious self-interest, are full of brotherly love and charity. Rely, therefore, on your hopes; and if these friends are good and amiable, do not despair._

Old book. Something else he knows: books like this aren't gone by any means, but they're far less common than they were. Something like this is a definite Antique with a capital A - kept by someone because they enjoy the age of the thing as much as the thing itself. And this isn't even the only one of these she has.

Weird fucking girl.

Nothing to do until she gets back. Nothing to do except sit and wait. And eat - to the kitchen, more water and more bread and another apple - and back to the futon with what he supposes counts as his breakfast, eating slower this time, the book open on his thigh and the heavier rain drumming the window in hundreds of little fingertips. The knots his gut was wound into are looser and he can breathe easier, and maybe it's merely sated hunger, but perhaps not.

> _I am by birth a Genevese, and my family is one of the most distinguished of that republic. My ancestors had been for many years counsellors and syndics, and my father had filled several public situations with honour and reputation. He was respected by all who knew him for his integrity and indefatigable attention to public business. He passed his younger days perpetually occupied…_

Whatever else he is or isn't, whatever is or isn't going on and whatever is or isn't going to happen to him, he doesn't believe he can properly consider himself _friendless_.

Not anymore.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, the book Daryl finds - you know how I love to have my characters find Thematically Important Books - is Mary Shelley's _Frankenstein._ A little on the nose, but oh well.


	7. keep your mind on the time with your ass on the line

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hurrying downtown to meet with Rick, Beth perceives her best chance of getting herself and Daryl out of the mess they're in. But any sense of safety is only an illusion, which is a fact that there's no easy way to learn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I continue to be slower than I'd like with updating. Sorry; it's frankly been quite difficult to write in general lately, what with worrying about fascism and all. But I'm trying to stick with it, because among other things I think the escapism is important. 
> 
> I'm also cycling between this and three other WIPs. But I expect two of those to wrap up soon. 
> 
> ❤️

In the cab headed downtown, for the first time she can remember in so damn long - except for last night - Beth is aware of the cameras.

She's been aware of them before. They're everywhere, on every street corner, beneath the streets in the tube stations, in the magcars themselves, in the skybridges, the elevated walkways, in every public hallway and every office and every store and every restaurant, everywhere she goes. Tiny black bulbous things affixed to polished surfaces, gleaming like the eyes of an enormous spider. She's known they were there - took a little getting used to after a small farming town out in the ever-shrinking middle of nowhere, where sometimes you could almost imagine away decades back to the beginning of the century when so many things were so much simpler, but when she went to the academy and then to Atlanta, Farm Girl in the Big City, she rapidly adjusted. No more than a couple weeks and she stopped seeing them at all.

But she never entirely forgot they were there. And now she's freshly aware of them, of the one set into the cab’s ceiling, and of the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that at this very moment, someone somewhere is actively watching her. That she's the object of particular attention, perhaps on the part of someone who's already suspicious of her. Who already suspects what she's done.

Last night, she was ready to go with the likelihood that with the chaos and the running and the inevitable press storm that must have followed, no one knew he was with her. Whether it was weariness or a genuinely correct assessment of the situation, she seized on that idea and stuck with it. But now - maybe simply because her imagination is rested enough to run away with itself - she's considering the possibility that the cab could suddenly veer away from the course she set it on and take her to _them,_ while back at her apartment they’re taking _him_ too, and no one will ever see either of them again. Not that they’ll kill him, no - he must still be too valuable. But her?

They were willing to kill dozens of people last night. She’ll be nothing more than a loose end to snip off.

She shivers, sits up straighter and hisses as the seat’s shiny faux-leather makes a sharp popping noise. She needs to calm the hell _down,_ because regardless of whether or not she's actually being watched, appearing noticeably on edge isn't going to do her any favors.

Nor Rick. And right now she needs Rick, if she needs anyone at all.

The cap doesn't veer off course. It hums straight and steady along the wet streets, the rain pattering softly on the windows, the lowering gray cloud and the steam and the blurry glow of lights as they pass her and she passes them. The screen set into what would - in a regular car - be the back of the driver’s seat displays talking head after talking head, their brows furrowed with concern about some disaster or other, earnestly silent. Doorways, other windows, other cars, adscreens, brilliant neon laced above her, always moving. Always dancing. This took some getting used to as well: the omnipresent light. There is never any true _dark_ in Atlanta. Sometimes she misses what she grew up with, the night sky and the countless scattered stars, but the strange beauty of what she lives in now is undeniable.

Even in the shadows, flowers grow.

She only realizes the cab has murmured to a halt a few seconds after it does, when it chimes to alert to get her ass out. She tugs the hood of her jacket back over her head, and as an afterthought, pulls it low as it'll go over her eyes. She feels slightly ridiculous as she pushes open the door and steps out onto the slick pavement, boots splashing, but oh well. Very little about her present situation _isn't_ ridiculous.

You fight the stream or you flow. There's no door number three.

Behind her, the cab clicks into gear and hums away. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she glances up at the flashing sign announcing KWAN’S DELI AND KOREAN KITCHEN. Below it, smaller but flashing too: SANDWICHES AND SALADS OUR SPECIALTIES. Once more her stomach practically snarls at her, and she picks up her pace, accepting a held door from an elderly Korean man as he exits.

Not that there was any turning back before. But this feels like another step beyond that, another along a course of her own from which she won't be able to  veer.

The thing is, she abruptly understands with vague bemusement, she doesn't even really want to.

~

The deli is still packed with the last of the breakfast crowd, and it's noisy and warm, all the windows fogged. The thick mingled smell of wet clothes and sweat and cooking meat and oil, which should be profoundly unpleasant, manages to be appealing in a way she could never hope to explain. She stands in the doorway - steps _out_ of the doorway as two laughing girls push past her, opening their umbrellas - and scans the full tables, the line by the counter for the cashier, the couple of coffee machines along the opposite wall. A multitude of voices raised to be heard over each other blend English, Korean, Spanish, and what she thinks she recognizes as Arabic into a single incomprehensible language.

It's not the quietest, most private place to meet. Then again, that might be the point.

She's kind of new to the whole _criminal_ thing.

At first she wonders if she's missed Rick, if she's too late and he gave up and left her to her own - hopelessly out of their depth - devices. But then she spies him toward the back, hand raised, his cool, keen gaze locked on her, and she weaves her way toward him through the crowd.

When she reaches him, she pauses for a few seconds, glancing at the two covered coffee cups in front of him, the empty chair opposite, and then at him. Why her hesitation comes _now,_ she's not certain - not certain what's even motivating it, given that she's not afraid - but he gestures impatiently at the chair and she slides into it, pushing back her hood and wiping her damp hands on her jeans.

He leans forward, makes no attempt to be subtle or tactful as he studies her, so she studies him right back. He looks harried, faintly irritated, and like he hasn't slept at all, but other than that, she supposes he appears fine.

He nudges one of the cups of coffee across to her. She's not a huge coffee fan, but she accepts it without complaint, curls her hands around it and soaks in the warmth and the bitter strength of the smell. Her stomach calms a little.

“Y’alright?”

She nods.

“Chest okay? Throat?”

“Still hurt, sorta.” She gives him a wry smile. “But I ain't bleedin’.”

He gives her his own nod, and seems completely unsurprised. “Yeah. Whatever they used, it doesn't stick around once you're not breathing it anymore. Everyone who got out is mostly alright too.”

“But that's…” She frowns. Yet another thing that isn't sitting right with her. “If someone was really tryin’ to kill us all, why would they use somethin’ like that?”

“Dunno. Keep the casualties contained? Keep it from affecting anyone outside? Maybe something went wrong.” He waves an impatient hand. “Doesn't matter. What matters is what we do now. You did what I said? He's outta sight?”

“Yeah. I don't think anyone knows. But Rick, the cameras-”

“In the station? No. They're all wiped. There's nothing on any of ‘em.”

“They're.” She blinks, utterly nonplussed, coffee forgotten between her palms. “ _Wiped?_ ”

“Mhm.” He takes a swallow of his own coffee and grimaces. “Blank. Starting from right when we brought him in up until… Well, up until we all got out. So maybe they all got disabled instead of wiped, but either way. There's no footage of him at all.”

Which means, he's not saying, no footage of _them._ Of them, and of what they did.

Even so. “That doesn't make any _sense_.”

“No, it doesn't. What makes even less sense is all the records from when we brought him in are gone. The scans. His prints. Nothing. And the dashcam footage from the cruiser.” He gazes at her in silence for a few seconds, the surrounding din flooding back in like a wave breaking through a levee. “Someone wanted this guy to _disappear_.”

Beth stares back at him. Down at her coffee. A kid in a cheap crackling plastic raincoat bumps her shoulder on the way to the door, tosses her an apology in Spanish, and she's only aware of it to the most distant degree. Thing is, it's yet another revelation that doesn't surprise her. Killing people never would have been enough, if they wanted to cover this up. Of course they would have needed to go broader. Deeper.

Yet she and Rick are sitting here, and Daryl’s sitting back at her apartment, and most of the people who were in the station are probably now either alive in the hospital or safe at home.

“They _did_ screw up,” she murmurs, and Rick shouldn't be able to hear her but he clearly does, because he ducks his head, and his grimace nearly twists into a grim smile.

“Yeah. I mean, I'm betting. Maybe not the actual shit they put in the air, but could be even that went wrong. Could be just about everything that _could_ go wrong for them did. We might never know why, but I don't think that matters too much.” He takes another swallow of coffee and turns his head to look out the window at the human-shaped shades passing by. “So now we’re all in kind of an interesting position.”

She bites her lip, wiping a drop of coffee away from the edge of the lid with her thumb. “You think you're in danger?”

“Me? Probably not. Doesn’t seem like they can knock us off now. When we were all in one place, they could’ve passed it off as something else. Which is what’s happening.” He turns his face back to her. “You seen it?”

She shakes her head. But she's thinking about the screen in the cab. The news. She registered none of the words on the crawl and she didn't have the sound on, but those earnestly silent talking heads seemed awfully concerned about _something._

“They're saying it was a terrorist attack. Like the one up in New York last year, with the nerve gas in the magcars? No one can say any different, and there's no evidence it _wasn't,_ so that's the story. For now.” Rick swipes his hands down his face, his weariness suddenly more stark than before. “And I'm sure as hell not gonna set ‘em straight. Not with the kinda shit that'll get me into, even if no one _does_ try to kill me. I got a family to think about.”

_Oh._ Did he tell her? Did she forget? She looks at him, mouth working slightly. It didn't even occur to her - and it's like a fist turning in her diaphragm. That he might not be only risking himself by coming out here to meet her. That when she pulled her gun on him last night, regardless of whether or not she _ever_ would have fired it-

“I'm sorry,” she whispers - and once again he hears her, and waves it away.

At least she doesn't have to clarify.

“I couldn't just leave you out there flapping in the wind.” His face softens, brief but unmistakable. “I got a daughter.”

Another _oh._ She's not sure what to say. “How old?”

“Little over a year.” Small smile. Not so grim as before. “But she’ll be your age someday. So.” He clears his throat, the first true awkwardness in him she can recall seeing. She's not sure what to make of it, other than to surpress a smile of her own. But then he's pushing the chair back, its steel legs grinding against the rough tile floor, and getting to his feet. “Stay put. I'll be back.”

He's gone through the crowd of diners before she can ask him what he's doing, moving toward the counter with more nimbleness than she would have expected, and lost to view. She watches a few more seconds, wondering, then tugs her sleeve back and taps her phone to life, scrolls quickly through messages. Junk, coupon codes she won't use, something from Maggie about Mama’s birthday. She's not certain what she might have expected to see, aside from the usual - maybe something with the subject line WE KNOW WHAT YOU DID AND WE’RE COMING TO KILL YOU. But though that image does get a quiet cough of a laugh out of her, it also hits her with the fact, obvious and known but still strange in a world where it's hardly ever true: _he_ has no way of contacting her. As far as she knows - and of course she might have this totally wrong - he has no way of contacting anyone. He's totally cut off.

Maybe that's a comfort to him. Maybe the isolation outside captivity makes him feel safer.

She hopes it’s not the opposite.

“Alright.”

She jumps as Rick drops back into his seat and places a half foil-wrapped egg-and-sausage bagel in front of her, the egg brilliant yellow and its edges oozing melted cheese. It looks like a heart attack in a wrapper - and it's exactly what every cell in her stomach is suddenly roaring for. She seizes it and shoves it into her face, and when Rick arches an amused eyebrow at her, she raises a middle finger in response without missing a beat in her chewing.

True, as of yesterday he was in some capacity her superior, and assuming she still has a _job,_ he still is. But she also suspects they may in some ways be past that now.

“Alright,” he says again - around his own mouthful of bagel - once she's slowed down. “I need to know if _you_ know anything else. Did he tell you anything? Could you actually get him to talk?”

“Some. Not a lot.” She licks cheese off her knuckle and hesitates a couple of beats, trying to pull together the words. “I don't think it's just that he doesn't wanna talk about it. There's a lot _he_ doesn't know.”

“What _does_ he know?”

“They were holdin’ him prisoner. Doin’ some kinda tests on him. Experiments. His augs? I think that's part of what it was. What they were doin’ to him. He wasn't exactly talkin’ like any of it was anythin’ he asked for.”

Rick is nodding as she speaks, nibbling some egg out from under the edge of his fingernail, his eyes unfocused and meditative. He continues to appear unsurprised by any of it. It's possible that he's beyond surprise. It's also possible that, although he hasn't been privy to what she has, his thoughts have been working in the same directions purely on their own.

He doesn't seem like a fool.

“He give you any details? Anything?”

She takes a breath, and something woven deep into her chest twinges as she thinks back. His eyes, his voice when he told her what little he did. Not just fear, and not just remembered pain; she sees him and hears him and feels what lay behind all the other things it was so much easier to name, and she understands. He was _lonely_ there in whatever dark place they kept him.

He was alone.

“He said it was dark. He said they _fucked him up_.” Her mouth twists. “And he said… He talked about someone named _Sherry._ ” She points at her arm with a cheese-sticky finger. “He had a needle mark, he said she injected him with somethin’. Helped him escape, too.”

Rick tilts his head. “He talk like those two things were connected?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I think so. And there was another thing.” She worries at the edge of the foil, wishing somewhat absurdly that she had taken notes. She had been so tired, and he hadn't exactly been coherent either, and now the whole thing has taken on the gauzy qualities of a dream - which it had already possessed anyway. “Right after he got us free, he just about collapsed. I thought he was gonna pass out. When I was gettin’ him outta there, I had to help him walk.”

“What's that got to do with Sherry and the needle?”

“I'm not sure. But he said somethin’.” Said something, and it made her shiver then and thinking about it makes her shiver now, though she's fairly confident he doesn't see.

Rick rolls his hand in a _keep going_ gesture. “Which was?”

“He said… ‘It’s wakin’ me up’.”

Long silence. So long it becomes uncomfortable, at least on her end, and she glances down at her mostly eaten bagel, the crumpled wrapper, the sticky spots where the beverage of a previous patron has congealed. The way he's looking at her, his eyes laser-focused and piercing - and yet not _at_ her, not quite. He's looking _through_ her, obviously thinking far beyond the bounds of them and this meeting, and whatever is running through his mind, it's troubling him.

Not that it wasn't troubling him before. It's all troubling.

“Alright,” he says finally, folding his hands in front of him and leaning over them, his voice dropping. “So we got an escaped _science project,_ experimental augmentations, and whoever he is and whatever they were doing with him, he's important enough that they'll kill a lot of people to get him back.” He stops, head once more tilted in that slightly odd way he has. “He give you any idea who _they_ are?”

“No. I don't think he knows either.”

Rick sighs. “Great. So unless he's lying, he's pretty much in the same boat we are.”

_Except he's worse off,_ she thinks, though she's not inclined to argue. _He knows even less. He's what they're after. And he's got no one._

_He's got no one but me._

“You said you could help me,” she begins, a little hesitant. “I mean… what I did… Am I fired?”

_Am I going to go to prison?_

“Are you…” Rick looks at her for a few seconds, nonplussed, then breathes a laugh. “No. No, Beth, you ain't fired. There's no footage, remember?” He shrugs, and she sees another hint of his smile. “And I helped you already. I'm not gonna screw you over now.”

“I pulled my gun on you,” she says quietly.

His expression turns placid. Blank. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Oh.” She ducks her head, her cheeks flushing. She wants to thank him, and she knows she shouldn't, and she doesn't know how she would anyway. Not adequately. “Right. Okay.”

“I'm gonna look into this on my end. Carefully. Try to keep it under the radar. They could have someone inside the department. Hell, they probably do. If they had the balls to do what they did, if they had the _ability_ …” He sighs again, squeezing his eyes briefly closed. “Shit. I'm outta my mind.”

Something hits her, almost with enough force to make her gasp. “Wait.” She jerks her head up. “What about the people who _did_ see him? What about the Captain? What about your friend?”

“Shane? Shane’ll keep his mouth shut if I ask him to. We were kids together. I trust him, he trusts me. Michonne the same. She's a straight arrow. I might have to ask her for help anyway. Everyone else?” He spreads his hands. “Like I said, there's no _evidence_ he was ever there. They've been talking some, I think, but right now there's nothing to tie it together. It's a goddamn mess. They haven't even really started sorting out all the pieces. When they do, there's gonna be a problem, but in the meantime…” His eyes narrow. “I want you to write down a number.”

She taps her wrist, but he reaches across the table as her phone flicks on, covers it with his palm. She raises her eyebrows at him, confused.

“No. _Write_ it. On your arm.” He reaches into the pocket of his coat and pulls out a battered plastic pen, holds it out. Still confused - but starting to get it - she takes it and clicks the end, pressing the tip to the inside of her arm just above her wrist. “Ready?”

She nods. He gives her the number, low and so fast she nearly can't keep up. She doesn't recognize it, but that's not exactly unexpected, and she hands the pen back to him and tugs her sleeve down. “What is it?”

“When you're outta here, call that number,” he says, as if he hasn't heard her. “She's a friend. Tell her you and him need a place to lie low and she’ll take care of you. The people looking into this are gonna wanna talk to you, but I'll do what I can to put ‘em off for now. Alright?”

“Alright.” She pulls in a breath, sits up straighter. She's getting the feeling that the meeting is concluding. “Should I do anythin’ else?”

“No. Wait till you hear from me. I'll try to make it quick.” Sure enough, he's balling up the bagel wrapper and pushing it into his empty coffee cup, sliding the chair back and getting to his feet. “Wait here for five minutes, then leave. Wherever you got him, get back to him fast as you can, and you get in touch with her. Don't wait. Do it.”

“Alright,” she repeats, and he gives her a final nod, turns away and weaves swiftly through the maze of tables to the door. “Thank-” she calls after him, but cuts herself off.

Her earlier instinct was right. He wouldn't want it. And anyway, he's gone. She should focus on doing what he said, and _only_ that, as quickly as she's able.

He's saving her ass. And he's still in charge of her. The least she can do is follow his instructions.

~

The rain is letting up by the time she ducks through the front door of her building, and her dripping in the elevator is minimal. It's weird, _crazy,_ but as she walks swiftly down the hall to her door, giving an elderly woman with her blue-gray hair gathered into a firm bun an absent nod as she passes, her mood is almost good _._ Not cheerful, but good. It's that she has direction, maybe. She has something to _do,_ and even more, she has a sense that what she's going to do might even be effective, at least for now.

And it's what she felt after she ended the call with Rick this morning: she has someone on her side. She has _help._

She can help Daryl.

He doesn't appear to have moved, she notices immediately when she shuts her door firmly behind her and the motion-activated lights - sensing that it's dim enough - flicker on. He's sitting on the futon, hunched, and as she approaches him, she sees that he's hunched _over_ something. She also notes the half empty glass of water and the apple core on the plate beside him, and feels an odd satisfaction that she doesn't quite understand.

She’s helping him. He's not alone anymore.

What he's hunched over, she also sees when she reaches him, is one of the books she brought from home - her childhood library, mostly inherited, and kept and treasured accordingly. She's always loved the feel of the books, the smell of the pages, almost beyond what the books themselves contain, and to see him holding one of them now does something to her that she can't define any more than her satisfaction.

Perhaps she should be annoyed that he's clearly poked around her things, but more than anything else, looking at him gazing down at it with his hair nearly obscuring his face, she feels _sad._ Because when was the last time he did this? Did they let him have books, there in whatever dark they held him captive? Did they ever leave him alone with himself like this, alone in a way that gave him an atom of comfort, when he wasn't merely waiting for them to torment him again?

What was his life, before all this happened to him?

_How long was he there?_

And he hasn't looked up at her. Though he must know she's here.

She clears her throat, and he does - and as he does, his expression unreadable, she catches the flare deep in the darkness of his pupils, and she's reminded all over again, with a little shiver up her spine, that these eyes aren't the ones he was born with.

Augmented eyes aren't all that weird. Eyes were some of the earliest modern aug implants developed. Yet there's something deeply unsettling about these, about how they're so close to natural that it's easy to forget they aren't-

Until they make her remember.

She nods at the book. “Watcha readin’?”

He glances down at it, back at her, closes it and holds it up so she can see the cover.

“ _Frankenstein._ ” She gives him a little smile. It's not really what she would have expected to see him reading - yet she identifies that seconds later as not entirely fair to him. She barely knows him. Hell, he seems to barely know _himself_. “That's a good one. I read it for school.”

“ _The Modern Prometheus,_ ” he says quietly. The subtitle. He lowers the book into his lap. “I never read it.”

She settles a hand on her hip, her smile quirking. “You went through my stuff.” His brows knit together, vague alarm creeping into his expression, and she shakes her head. “It's alright. Not like there's anythin’ to do here, I guess. Look, I gotta call someone and then we gotta get outta here. Can you-” She skids to a halt when she realizes what he's wearing, what he's _not_ wearing, his noticeably out-of-place clothes and his essentially bare feet. “Oh, _dammit_. I'm sorry. I totally forgot.”

He blinks. Seems puzzled. Then his own gaze flicks down to his feet and he huffs a laugh. “Whatever. Don't matter.”

“It _does_ matter.” She turns and hooks her fingers under the hem of her sleeve, pulling it up to reveal the number. “We gotta go, and you can't run around the city with no-”

What she remembers most vividly later is how _quiet_ it is when it happens.

There's no explosion, no inward crash, no yelling or hail of bullets or thumping of boots. It's not a CAS shockteam busting down her door or a flood of enemy soldiers like something out of a bad movie. Her door, far from being busted in any particular direction, simply appears to _lift_ off its hinges and tips inward and open, and through the doorway steps the elderly woman Beth passed in the hall, both hands rising smoothly to grip and aim her neat little handgun directly at Beth’s head. Beth hears the shot - nothing but a sharp _ping_ noise - and she's absolutely positive she's dead, but when Daryl slams into her and hauls her onto the floor it's hard to maintain that certainty, and when he hurls her onto her feet and toward the big front window, she questions it all over again. Because she's breathing, she's breathing so _hard,_ whirling in time to see his arm blossoming into that lethally gleaming black flower and shooting a bolt straight into the woman’s throat. She crumples without a sound, and behind her follow two young men wearing utterly nondescript jeans and brown leather jackets and carrying guns identical to hers. Beth opens her mouth to shout something - warning, plea, she has no clue what - and Daryl doesn't give her a chance to work it out. The muzzles of the guns flash in unison as the men fire, and Daryl’s pained grunt is muffled as he throws his weight into her again and sends them both hurtling toward the window, and she clutches at him - what the hell else is she _supposed_ to do - at the same moment he curls his arm tight around her middle.

And when they crash through the glass together and arc gracefully through the air, and she catches a glimpse of the cars passing and the grimy pavement far below, the only coherent thought she can scrape together is _well, it figures._

Then they're falling, plummeting in a glittering shower of glass, and she presses her face into the burning hollow of his throat and thinks that, if they're going to die now, at least he's not dying in _their_ hands.

He said he wasn't ever going back. He's not. He’ll die first. She just didn't expect him to take her with him.

Bafflingly, she's not all that upset.

And as the damp wind rips at her hair and buffets their bodies and her stomach somersaults into her ribcage, light _explodes_ through her closed eyelids, light and heat, and she's screaming, terror and something she only later recognizes as pure exhilaration, and thinking that he's flung them into the afterlife itself. Shot them into it like the bolt from his arm.

She really doesn’t want to die. But Daddy raised her to believe that death isn’t the end, and if you think about it, she was on borrowed time anyway.

If Daryl is taking her there too, that might be fine.


	8. posing as a savior if you fall across the night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After taking an unexpected fall, Daryl and Beth have some problems to get rid of. But even if they manage to do so, there are - of course - only more problems waiting for them, and of an entirely different kind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still going slow. One of my WIPs is very close to wrapping up, though (not Howl), which is something of a relief. Thanks for your patience, and for reading and for saying nice things. 
> 
> ❤️

But the light isn't death. It isn't Heaven. Because she's breathing when they hit the ground.

They don't hit hard enough to kill them, but they do hit hard. Hard enough to slam a grunt out of Daryl’s chest, hard enough to bend his legs under him, and with bizarre clarity she watches as he lands in a crouch with one hand pressed against the ground to stabilize himself, his other arm still wrapped around her and holding her tight. She sees the light spreading all around them like a halo almost too brilliant to look at, notices through a dream haze as it illuminates the shocked faces of nearby people - _witnesses, shit_ \- and even as her own boots hit the ground and send painful shockwaves up through her ankles to her knees, she _is_ thinking about Heaven. 

She's thinking about angels. 

_He did this before._ She's stumbling to her feet, turning in an unsteady circle and gaping at him as he stands and stares up at the hole where her window used to be. All around them, shards of glass glitter multicolored in the pelting rain. _When he jumped._

He did this, and that's how he survived a fall that should have killed him. 

People are looking at them. They saw him do that, are probably filming them both, and they'll be talking. To cops, to the press, to anyone who will listen. But she can't do anything about that now. She follows Daryl’s upward gaze, sees two tiny faces peering down at them, steps back and looks around frantically for any sign of more of them at street level.

Nothing yet. Just gawkers, and also angrily honking traffic. Doesn't mean they can stick around. Where the hell can they _go?_ No idea, but they were going anyway. Get somewhere safe, make that call she has to make, take it from there. 

_You knew this was a possibility._

Yeah. She did. 

She grabs his arm, tugs. “We can't stay here. C’mon.” 

He turns to her. He looks dazed, and that discomfits her. He shouldn't. They can't afford that. She needs him clear, because God knows how long _she_ can be. 

“Where?” 

“ _Anywhere._ Anywhere that isn't here.” She gives him a sharper tug. “You can run?”

He nods. She feels a twinge of despair. He's soaked, he still has no shoes, and he looks even more like an escaped mental patient than he did before - and his left upper arm is bleeding freely from a rip in his sleeve. 

_Graze._ God, please, let it be a graze, because she's not sure she can handle a serious bullet wound, and they sure as _hell_ can’t go to a hospital. 

He's focusing rapidly, must catch where she's looking and why, because he glances down at it and shakes his head with obvious impatience. “‘m fine. You say we gotta go, so let’s go.” 

She doesn't wait any longer, whirls, and she trusts him to follow. She launches herself into motion, tears through a clot of people and turns onto a smaller side street, the buildings closing in and crowds and the traffic both thinning out. But that's not so good, she realizes seconds later; it's harder to lose anyone in a sparse crowd, harder to scatter people’s attention around. She glances back, verifies that he's keeping up - running on gritty cracked pavement like the lack of shoes doesn't bother him in the least - and surges ahead toward what she knows is the next major thoroughfare. Store after store of cheap, glitzy shopping. Before this, she was actually thinking she would grab him some clothes there. 

_Oh, well._

Her lungs are burning by the time they reach it, and the soles of her boots skid on the wet sidewalk and she nearly tumbles into the path of a couple of teenage girls walking hand in hand. She ignores their irritated _hey, fucking watch it,_ and hazards another glance back as she crosses the street, dodging cars.

Taxi? No. Can't count on it going fast enough, even if she can grab one that's right here, and in any case, she keeps thinking about the cameras. Instead she pushes through the flow of foot traffic, going downstream, Daryl close behind. In another, more upscale part of the city they - really _Daryl_ -  might stand out far too much, but this is a district frequented by the more wildly dressed _youth,_ as disapproving adults would say, and they're surrounded by hair twisted into brightly colored spikes and wound into large balls, elaborate shimmering lace, the sheen of patent leather. Umbrellas glowing like weird deep sea creatures. Fluorescent pink lips and peacock-shaded eyelids. Elaborate tattoos - real and false - that seem to move independently of their owners. Ornate piercings, implants made to look like horns and whiskers.

If anything, they stand out by looking so goddamn _normal._

She's beginning to think they might have shaken the others, when she looks back to check on Daryl and spots them over his left shoulder - because they stand out too in their sheer normalcy, and with how the rain is drenching them in a way it isn't anyone around them, as if the bits of the human kaleidoscope they're rushing through are covered by invisible rainslickers. Pristine birds of paradise, while she and Daryl - and the people chasing them - are bedraggled rats. 

She almost smiles. 

Can't see their guns. Only two of them anyway; man and a woman, and the flashes she gets of their faces reveal no emotion whatsoever. She wonders vaguely if they're genuinely human, if they're less human than Daryl is, and then she's seizing his arm again, yanking him to the right and beneath a wide glass archway beyond which the world is white light and white tile and row upon row of gleaming storefronts.

For a while, she knows, malls weren't a thing. Then the summers started overtaking the winters with long days of heat, the rains came hard and heavy, and being outside was no longer such an attractive proposition for much of the year. 

Though it looks shiny, the floor is finely textured, but it's still slick enough that she nearly slips all over again, and it's Daryl’s turn to grab her arm, pull her up and haul her along. The music is loud, a mercilessly thumping bass like she's encountered in the few dance clubs she's strayed into. Out of the corner of her eye she catches Daryl’s flinch, his mouth twisted into a wince, his hand flying up to shield himself from- 

From what? 

Doesn't matter. Seconds later the flicker is gone and he's all forward motion, carving through the morass of human bodies. Together they skid around a planter housing a couple of sad little saplings and run down another bright wing, past a weird line of regularly alternating lingerie and shoe stores. Beth risks one more look back, doesn't see anyone, feels a rush of elation- 

No. Right there, rounding the corner. Bedraggled, but they don't appear winded. 

Jesus, _are_ they human? 

It's not until she sees the sign overhead, its cheerful hurrying figures and line upon line of text being translated into four separate languages, that she understands where they are. And when she does see it, when she does understand, she leaps at it and grabs, because it might be their only chance now. It's certainly their best. 

“This way!” Leading him left and through a wide set of glass doors toward a row of escalators, which are ferrying people serenely downward. “Tube!” 

She releases him once they're through the doors, listening for the sound of him behind her as she shoves her way down the escalator, muttering apologies in response to the indignant yelps directed her way. Ordinarily this kind of rudeness would bother her, even in its necessity. Now she doesn't give a shit, and when she steps off at the bottom - stumbling a bit at the sudden change in speed - she doesn't bother to look back. She heads off through the crowd, past food stands emanating powerful clouds of the smell of cooked meat and spices, past stalls selling glittering trinkets and obnoxiously flashing jewelry, toward signs that read RED LINE - AIRPORT. 

Daryl’s turn to grab her, fingers sinking into her shoulder - though it's brief, and he doesn't attempt to stop her, instead leaning in, his voice raised to make himself heard over the din of voices and the steel drums of a nearby busker. “Ain't got fare.”

Turnstiles ahead of them. People passing their wrists casually over scanner panels. Beth slows, laughs at the absurdity.

She's a cop - _half a cop_ \- and she's breaking petty law after petty law. “You didn't really think we were gonna bother with fare.” 

Daryl echoes the laugh, rough and dry. “Guess not.” 

Yells when they leap the turnstiles. Beth ignores them and keeps running. Thing is, she would explain if she could stop to do so, they're not intending to use the magcars at all, so in fact it doesn't make much _sense_ for them to pay. 

Get trapped on a magcar? With these people? Next thing to suicide. 

Moving at a trot now, she makes her way down the platform, sensing Daryl still close behind. No mag in sight. The trains run quiet, so one might be approaching, but they both need to take advantage, _immediately,_ because when she looks back again, she sees a flicker of a face among all those other faces - there one second and gone the next, but she knows what she saw. 

Running the length of the platform is that usual yellow textured band, the border of which you're not supposed to stand beyond when a mag arrives. She runs heedlessly across it, reaches back and fumbles for Daryl’s arm- 

She sees the lights just as she takes that last step, sees them swelling and swelling as the blast of the mag’s horn slaps her in the ears. It's too late. She took another risk and it's going to bite her in the ass. She was thinking about avoiding suicide, and here she is, leaping in front of a damn train; how _stupid_ is that? How much of a _waste?_

What the hell are her _parents_ going to think? 

Screams, alarm and fear. Nothing but air under her boot. But then resistance under her ass and thighs, and resistance turns to force as she's buoyed into that air; strong arms around and beneath her, and she's rising _up,_ faster than she knows she ever could have propelled herself, and the far wall is rushing at her with all the speed of the mag. She opens her mouth to do some of her own screaming, the mag the final voice in the chorus-

And they land, not as hard as jumping out of the window but _hard,_ and Daryl releases her at the same instant the mag shrieks past behind her, a wild blur at the edge of her vision. She staggers, catches herself with her hands spread on the tile, her palms stinging with the impact. 

“ _Jesus!_ ” 

She turns, panting; Daryl has dropped into a crouch and is staring at the mag, eyes wide. With a ripple of relief she sees that he looks more defensive than exhausted. 

Good. Because they need to go. 

“C’mon.” Hand on his shoulder - once more that weird sense of firm yielding that's unlike any human flesh she's ever touched. She shakes it off. She'll mull over her own discomfort when they're not fleeing for their lives. “We can't stay here. It'll pass and they'll have caught up by then.” 

And if they're out of sight, there's every reason to suppose they’ll assume she and Daryl _have_ gotten on a magcar. Unless people are chattering loud enough about the two insane idiots who just killed themselves, which is totally possible. 

“Where?” 

She nods to the right, the direction the mag is going in. Beyond the end of the platform: the gaping mouth of a tunnel, and darkness. 

He rises, wincing as his injured arm flexes, looks the way she's indicated… and nods as well. Shrugs. What choice do either of them have? 

She takes his hand, and they run again. 

~ 

The magcars are relatively new. Many of the stations are as well, and the smooth-walled tubes through which the sleek bullet-shaped things hurtle. But not everything is shiny and fresh, and for the most part the tubes follow the older Atlanta subway network. In less affluent parts of the city, the maglev rails run through dingy tunnels illuminated with sallow, flickering light - when illuminated at all. Easy to miss the difference from inside, given how fast the things move, and people frequently don't even know, or barely know, and see no reason why they should care.

Before today, Beth didn't think it was important. Didn't think it would ever be. Now, as she leads Daryl swiftly into the tunnel, she thinks she knows just enough to - potentially - save them, and just enough to freak herself out.

The old subway tunnels aren't only the ones the rails run through. There are others, formerly used but closed off, smaller service tunnels, storage rooms. A maze of them. One thing that hasn't changed since the days of the previous century is how people with nowhere else to go frequently use the abandoned parts of the network - to camp in, hide in. Live in. _Extra-legal._

Which is why she knows about it. But that's all she knows. And she sure as hell never expected to be hiding down here herself. 

They lower the pace to a fast walk. The tunnel curves over them, and in the dim light thrown by a string of yellow bulbs, she looks up and sees row upon row of pale stalactites, decades of buildup of minerals and filth deposited by eternally dripping water. Some of them are dripping into shallow puddles beneath them, and she sidesteps these, turning her face away from the odor that emanates from them. Dirty, musty, the way abandoned places smell. She glances back at Daryl; he's turning just as she is, nose wrinkling, and she wonders if his sensory enhancement is confined to his eyes, or if there's more.

She doesn't feel inclined to ask. Not right now.

She swings down the first side tunnel they come to, thankful that the lights run down this way - more intermittent and dimmer, but far better than the dark. The rails don't follow them here; instead they're following ancient double-rails covered with rust, sections missing here and there where they seem to have been pried up for some purpose she can't and doesn't care to imagine. 

With a heavy wave of unease, she realizes in a way she didn't before that beyond the entry to the tunnel, she had no plan.  

At least she doesn't hear anyone pursuing them. 

She doesn't hear anything much at all, in fact, except for the crunch of her boots, the distant hum of the magcars as they hover along, and the constantly echoing _plink_ of water hitting water. Which is unsettling. It's all unsettling. Might be less unsettling to get some sign of habitation. 

Not that every single part of this isn't way, _way_ more than unsettling. 

After what feels like an hour - but probably isn't more than fifteen minutes or so - she abruptly halts beneath one of the dangling lights and faces him, stops him with a hand on his chest, the other reaching for his arm. “Lemme look at that.” 

He hisses, makes like he's going to pull away. Doesn't. He flinches when she plucks at his bloody shirt but holds still as she pulls the tear in the fabric carefully wider, leans in to examine the wound in the inadequate light. 

Not like she can do much if it's bad. But it doesn't seem to be. Beneath the blood - well-clotted now - it does look like no more than a graze. And he's no longer flinching, though she's closer to making direct contact with it than she was. 

It occurs to her then that maybe the flinching wasn't entirely about pain. 

He can take pain. If half of what he's told her is accurate, he's probably taken more pain than anyone ever should. 

“Doesn't look like you're gonna die,” she says, and gives him a rueful little smile, releasing his arm. “I should wrap it up, though.” 

He responds with a grunt and something between a shrug and a shake of his head. “‘m fine.” 

She sighs, rolls her eyes and reaches under her jacket, grips the hem of her thin tee. “I don't care.” She yanks, pulls off a ragged strip of cloth and reaches for him again. “It's disgusting down here. At least lemme keep stuff from gettin’ in it.”

“Beth,” he says quietly. “If some infection was gonna take me out, don't you think I'd be fuckin’ dead by now?”

He doesn't say more than that, and he doesn't have to. She gets it, and though she doesn't stop wrapping the cloth around his arm, her mouth tightens along with the rest of her muscles.

All the surgeries he's probably had. All the times he's been cut into. _Butchered,_ she thinks with a hot flare of anger. _They butchered him._ Because yes, it's accurate. She doesn't need proof. He knows what was done to him. 

Even if he doesn't remember all of it. 

_Yet._

She releases his arm and steps back, lowering her gaze - jerking her head up, startled, when a horn sounds off down some other regularly traveled tunnel. Out of the periphery of her vision, she sees Daryl’s attention follow her own, but he shares none of her surprise. 

Then he's merely looking at her again, leaning back against the wall and reaching across his chest to adjust the makeshift bandage. He grunts. “Now what?” 

“I can't go home.” She crosses her arms and briefly closes her eyes. She's completely lost track of time - though she could check her phone to clear that much up. But it feels like they've been running for days, and _I can't go home_ lands on her shoulders like lead, makes her weariness even worse. 

Shit. If they survive this, she's probably going to have to pay for the damn window. 

“Said you was gonna call someone.” 

“Yeah.” She sighs, pushes her hair back from her face. “Rick said I should-” 

Something in Daryl’s eyes snaps, bright and brittle. “Rick? You saw him?” 

She nods. “He's who I was meetin’. He said he was gonna help me. Help _us._ ” 

“You buy that?” 

“I trust him.” 

Daryl snorts, pushes away from the wall. He appears as if he might be about ready to begin pacing - twitchy. “You known him a long time, then?”

She rolls an uncomfortable shoulder. “I met him yesterday. But he's-” She puts up a hand as Daryl turns on her and opens his mouth, talks over him before he can get going. “He's a good man. He's got reasons. He said he's gonna look into what happened, that he has people he knows won't sell him or us out. I _trust him,_ ” she repeats firmly, and drops her hand. “He gave me a number to call, yeah. He said whoever it was would take care of us.” 

“Fine.” Daryl releases a hard breath, kicks at a pebble with his grimy toes. It skitters across the ancient tracks and into the dark. “So call.” 

“I'm _gonna,_ soon as I can get a-”

She falls silent, her sleeve pushed partway to her elbow, staring down at her arm with her phone forgotten. When she pulled down her sleeve in the deli, the numbers were crisp and easily legible. Now they're not much more than black smears thinning into gray streaks, barely recognizable as numbers at all. There's an 8. A little further along there's what might be either a 3 or another 8. A 6. And the rest is a watery mess. 

“ _Fuck,_ ” she breathes, both her arms loosening to hang helplessly at her sides. 

Daryl looks from her arm to her face, repeats the sequence. His expression is flat. “You don't remember it?” 

“I only heard it the once.” Her gut wrenches, all fury - what isn't directed at the rain is directed squarely at herself - and she stamps the heel of her boot against one of the rails, feeling instantly like a petulant kid and even angrier for it. “I didn't think…”

_Yeah, you didn't think. No offense, but you_ really _suck at this whole Fugitive From Justice thing._

But Daryl _doesn’t_ seem angry. He's merely quiet, head bowed and brow furrowed, his face mostly hidden by his hair. She glances down and sees that his fingers are working at the air, as if worrying at something she can't see. 

“Alright. We gotta keep movin’, then.” He gestures in the direction they were headed, the tunnel curving about twenty yards in and the rest of it lost to view. “You know where this goes?” 

“I don't know where any of it goes.” Once more she squeezes her eyes shut, presses her fingertips to her forehead. No, she has no idea what the hell she's doing. None whatsoever. “I've never been down here.”

She expects him to yell at her now, even if he didn't before. _You stupid little bitch, what the fuck was you thinkin’?_ But he doesn't. Instead she opens her eyes in time to see him nod, like this resolves something for him, and without any further hesitation he starts walking. “C’mon.” He shoots her a look over his shoulder. “Like you said, right? Can't go back.” 

No. They can't. She watches him for a few seconds, gnawing at her lip, before she joins him. 

She has no idea what the hell she's doing. But neither, she thinks, does he.

So at least she's in good company. 

~ 

Like before, Beth loses her grip on time. But it's not because of adrenaline or running, the blur that constant motion creates. It's because while everything down here is strange and subtly unreal, it also all looks pretty much the same after long enough spent wandering around in it. 

The tunnel stretches out, curves, stretches again. The lights flicker but remain in place, and it occurs to her to wonder - though she doesn't voice the question - who or what keeps them on. Why they haven't all burned out by now. Does the city employ people to maintain these unused tunnels? 

She has no way of knowing for sure, but she doubts it. 

They see no one, hear no one, but scattered along the sides of the tunnel and in small alcoves she spots signs of habitation: crates on which stand bottles and takeout bags, beds made of plastic and foam and old mattresses, scrap lean-tos. What look like privacy screens, also made of scrap. Lightless lanterns. 

“People live here,” Daryl murmurs. Not a question. He also doesn't sound especially shocked. Merely bemused. 

“Yeah.” Beth steps gingerly over a particularly wide and nasty looking puddle. “Some of ‘em don't have anywhere else to go. Some of ‘em are hidin’.”

“That how you got the idea to come down here?” 

She shrugs. “That's part of why. Mostly I was just… I dunno. I was just doin’ what seemed like it would work.” 

“Seems like it did. For now,” he adds, his voice low and tense. “Guess at some point it has to come out somewhere.” 

Beth supposes he's correct about that. But God knows where and when. In the meantime they're sticking to the main tunnel and not venturing down the few side tunnels they pass, where the light is significantly dimmer and the ground appears more waterlogged. Some of it is simply that those passages don't look pleasant, but even more, they give her a bad feeling. Like they don't lead anywhere good. 

They're probably more vulnerable to being followed this way. But they're vulnerable no matter what. 

“Tell me more about what Rick’s doin’.” 

She raises her head sharply, once more startled. It's not a question she anticipated - although she should have. Of course he wants to know, and of course he has a lot of reasons not to take her word for it, just as many as he has for trusting her in the first place. It makes sense that he's still not sure _who_ to trust. Makes sense that he might not trust _anyone,_ not fully. 

Okay. 

“He didn't go into a whole lotta detail,” she says slowly. “He thinks maybe they had someone on the inside. Also maybe it didn't go the way they wanted it to. Once people got outside and were breathin’ normal air, most of ‘em were fine.”

“Good,” Daryl says softly. “That's good.” 

She looks at him again, closely. Not surprised by it, but it's still… He says things like that, and she has to rearrange how she thinks of him. And it keeps happening. 

“There's no security footage of us.” She continues to study him out of the corner of her eye, unobtrusive as she can be. “There's no footage of anythin’. Someone wiped the drives. There's no record you were ever there in the first place. Rick said… it was like someone wanted you to disappear.” 

He's silent for a long time, head down. She can sense him mulling this over, and she can sense that he's troubled by it. Which isn't a tremendous stretch. She's not sure how else they're both supposed to feel. 

“Good,” he repeats finally. 

“Yeah?” 

He ducks his head in something she takes for a nod. “Less people know about me, probably the better.” 

She's willing to allow how that's so, at least in principle. But all at once it feels like the shadows around them are closing in, the string of lights overhead inadequate to push it back. And even if she wants to hide, she sure as hell doesn't want to hide in those. She releases a breath. “The wrong people still know.” 

“Yeah, well.” It's quick, but she catches his look when he swings it her way, and it's difficult to read but there's something about it that sends warmth trickling through her. “Maybe it's not all the wrong people.” 

She’s at a loss regarding how to respond to that, is fumbling to think of a response anyway as more of that warmth swells from a trickle to a flow- when one of the shadows detaches itself from the rest and comes at them. 

It's fast, quick as one of his bolts, hurtling through the air; she has time to see it streaking toward her, to discern its human shape, and then it's knocking her backward, almost sending her sprawling. Daryl whirls, swinging his arm up as he does so, his hand unhinging and folding downward and his forearm taking itself apart as the bow unfurls. But Beth is only peripherally aware of this; she's scrambling backward, groping for a gun that isn't there - stupid, _so fucking stupid_ \- her hand-to-hand training shifting into immediate gear, winding back to throw a punch as the humanoid shadow leaps at her again. It makes no attempt to dodge and she lands a hit squarely on the side of its head. 

She's feeling grimly pleased about that when she realizes that the blow barely seems to have slowed it down. 

Daryl yells something she can't make out as she throws her body sideways and out of the way of the thing’s trajectory, but it doesn't matter. Something else is there waiting for her and it seizes her with an arm around her shoulders and across her chest, yanking her backward so roughly the breath is squeezed out of her in a rasping grunt. Cruel flash of metal and the edge of something terribly sharp is pressed against the side of her throat, hot breath in her ear. She briefly gropes at the arm, then goes limp when the blade presses harder. 

It would be great if at some point she could stop being furious with herself. It would be great if at some point she could stop giving herself reasons to be.

The world snaps back into focus. Daryl is standing in front of her, crossbow aimed at a large man wielding a commensurately large rifle; before she can do anything to stop him she sees Daryl’s arm _flex-_

Nothing happens. 

His eyes widen in surprise, then fear as he bends his arm and examines the bow. The man takes a step forward, gestures with the rifle; he's calm. Controlled. Absolutely no indication that he's to be screwed with. “Lower it.” 

Daryl glares at him over the limb of the bow. But then his gaze flicks to Beth,  his mouth twists, and he obeys. No less rage. If anything she sees more, coupled with an awful helplessness that makes her ache. 

He momentarily ignores the gun and the man holding it, bares his teeth at whoever has her. “You hurt her, I swear, I’ll fuckin’-” 

“You try anything, I'll fucking hurt her.” Female voice, somewhat breathless but also reasonably calm. No more to be fucked with than the man. “You be smart, we’re gonna have a much easier time.” 

Beth had been thinking the lack of people was unsettling. Now she's wishing so much for that kind of discomfort. She moves in the woman’s grip, to the degree she can without leaning into the blade, and pulls in a breath. “We’re not a threat to you.” 

“Yeah? What’re you doing in our territory, then?” The blade abruptly lifts and points at Daryl, returns to Beth’s throat. In those few seconds, she sees that it's not being held in the woman’s hand. 

It _is_ the woman’s hand. 

All right. That's a thing. So how honest to be here? How much to say? 

Honest, she decides. While not saying any more than necessary. “We were runnin’ from people.” She swallows. “People who're tryin’ to kill us.” 

“So you led them _down here?_ ” The woman’s voice sharpens, her hand twitches, and Beth feels a sting followed by something warm trickling down her neck. Daryl’s entire body tightens, as if he's struggling to restrain himself at all. “How close behind you are they?” 

“We lost ‘em,” Daryl growls. “Back at the station. They ain't here.” 

“Far as you know.” 

“Rosita.” The man shoots her a coaxing _come on_ look, though his rifle doesn't waver. “Ease up, she's a kid.” 

“Yeah, and he's sure as shit not. Tyreese, _look_ at him.” 

The man shakes his head. “I am. And what I'm seein’ is one of us. So let's just hear ‘em out, I don't think they're in a position to be much of a problem.” He shifts his attention to Beth, and she can't detect any real aggression in his eyes. “Who was after you?” 

“I dunno.” Her hands clench into fists at her sides. “They had him. They wanna get him back. They tried to kill a bunch of people last night to do it, they're-”

“Hang on.”

Another voice, in front of them. As best she can, Beth angles her head to see a woman walk into the light. Her black hair is pulled back from her face, her eyes sharp - and by the gleam in the left one, Beth can tell it's artificial. Not nearly as obvious as her left arm, where whoever installed the aug didn't bother with skin. It's all black and silver carbon, the outlines of something like bone that also isn't like bone at all, her shining hand curved around a sleek scoped rifle of her own.

She fixes Beth with that cool stare. “You're talking about the terrorist attack.”

Daryl lets out another growl. “Wasn't no terrorists.”

“We know.” She glances at Daryl. “That was about you?”

“He helped everyone get out.” The pressure of the knife is easing, and Beth takes a deeper, grateful breath. “He saved ‘em.”

“Really.” Musing. The woman cocks her head, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. A few more seconds and she appears to make some kind of decision, because she slings the rifle over her shoulder and gestures down the tunnel as she lifts her chin at Tyreese. “Bring ‘em. We should head back.”

Rosita coughs a laugh. “Sasha, you sure that's-?”

“If they're telling the truth, we need to talk to them. And we’re not the only ones.” She starts to turn, but Daryl grunts indignation.

“We ain't goin’ nowhere with you.”

Sasha glances back, faintly exasperated. “Yeah, you are. Look, we don't wanna hurt you. Might even be able to help you. At any rate you're probably safer with us than anywhere else, so cooperate and get moving.”

So suddenly she nearly unbalances, Beth is released and pushed forward. She manages to steady herself, looks up at Daryl, who’s still wearing a mutinous expression. Tried to communicate with her eyes. _Please._ Because as before, as keeps happening: what choice do they have?

Daryl sighs and grits his teeth, but when Tyreese points after Sasha with the rifle, he starts moving. Beth sighs too - relief. A thin species of relief, but all the same.

“Give us a chance,” Tyreese says, the words mostly directed at her this time. “Might turn out we all want the same thing.”

That's not exactly comforting, Beth thinks as she follows, Rosita close behind. But it's better than nothing.

And they're still alive.


End file.
